Finding Solace
by Death Makes An Artist
Summary: One year after the date of her wedding, Alex stumbles into a child abuse case while working as a family court attorney. Her instant connection with the child changes Alex's life as she tries to figure out the best course of action for the child as well as the criminal investigation. Not a romantic fic. Sequel to Last Train Home. Mostly T rating, some M chapters.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This is the sequel to Last Train Home. You don't need to read LTH to understand this, but I certainly won't argue if you want to read the other one. LTH was a fiction written on request. Finding is something that I spun together in my head at work one night as a response to Alex moving forward. Please read and review. I'm always anxious to hear what you think. **

**DMAA**

_**Chapter One: On the Anniversary**_

It would have been our one year anniversary. Every part of me wanted to scream and cry, but I kept myself silent as I stood before the judge, chewing on my lip and sifting through a file. Casey had asked me to not leave law behind, to find something I could be passionate about again. I had. I worked in family court representing the State, once again. This time, though, instead of putting people away, my job involved advocating for children in the foster care system. In part, I reported status updates to the court on children. In part, I asked for orders granting us the ability to place a difficult child or compel human services and foster families to enroll children in therapy. It was not the best system by any means, but we worked hard. I took paperwork home with me nightly, made phone calls on weekends, and had a handful of children that I visited regularly in group homes because no one else did.

"Alex," John Holmes, the social worker I saw most often, whispered behind me. "Can I borrow you?"

I glanced at the other counselor at my table. She nodded. She would take care of the cases as they were called. I slipped out of my seat and followed John through the court house and down to the witness playroom. It was rare that I was in the victim-witness waiting area any longer. Mostly, it was the criminal cases that had parties waiting there, and I was no longer in criminal law. It was all civil.

A young girl of maybe four sat in the middle of the playroom, not touching any toys. A doll sat in her lap, but I doubted that she was even aware of as much. She had vacant chocolate eyes that were sunken, likely from no sleep. Her body was rail thin, bones protruding where they should not have been. She hardly blinked as she looked up at me before her eyes traveled back to the floor. There were sores and scrapes on her light brown skin. Behind her, Olivia was crouched, talking softly to her.

The detective and my long time friend looked up at me, her eyes telling me everything I needed to know. They were full of heart break and sorrow. The girl, I guessed, had been pulled from a drug lab or trafficking ring. The sergeant worked as part of the Special Victim's Unit of the New York Police Department. SVU picked up cases involving human trafficking, sexual assault, child abuse, and domestic violence. Often, our paths crossed professionally when children were involved.

"Bits," Olivia said, clearly addressing the child, as I crouched beside them. "This is my friend, Alex."

"Hi, Bits," I said, my words soft. "I like your doll."

Olivia gently touched Bits's shoulder. It was an unusual name, I thought, but then, most of the children I dealt with had unusual names. I had just closed a case for adoption where the eldest daughter's name was Princess Loved. At nine, she went by the moniker Elle. While I did not judge parents, I could not blame Elle for her decision. "Bits, can I take Alex outside this room for a minute and talk to her? We'll be right out there. You can see me. I promise I won't leave you."

The girl glanced distrustfully at me before reaching back and clinging forcefully to Olivia's hand. She shook her head violently, tears forming at the corners of her eyes.

"Hey, Bits," I whispered, "I promise to bring her back. Tell you what, did Olivia show you her badge?" The girl nodded and reached into her lap under the doll and showed me where she was stashing Olivia's detective shield. "What if I gave you mine, too, so you know I'll bring her back?"

For a few moments, Bits considered my proposition and then nodded. I pulled my badge out of my bag and handed it to her. No longer did I carry one that said District Attorney. This one was a human services badge. Its sole purpose was to get me in and out of court houses and human services buildings and hospitals where abused children waited for social workers and legal decisions to be made on their behalf. Bits studied it carefully before holding it beside the detective shield. Again, she nodded, and both disappeared beneath the doll.

Outside of the room, I could see that she was still just looking absently at the floor as if she had grown up knowing she could not be heard. Not seen was even better. I knew that look. I had worn it once upon a time ago when I was about her age. "What's her story?" I asked, my voice hushed so as to not carry.

"We pulled her from a house this morning. Narcotics went in on a bust. She was locked in the basement with a corpse. We think it might have been her mother, but she won't tell us. The woman was probably beaten to death. Melinda's taking a special on this one and moved it up the chain. We should know by tomorrow cause of death, but that still leaves Bits where she is now." Olivia put her hands in her back pockets and leaned back, her lip between her teeth.

I nodded. "Have you been to the hospital with her?"

"Yea. Severe malnutrition. She's going to have to be seen by a doctor daily unless she's hospitalized. She's had several broken bones through her life. The doctors said she was someone's punching bag. There are signs of sexual abuse both vaginally and anally. She's going to be going through meth withdrawals here the next few days."

I bit my lip. "Who's going to take her?" I asked. "I don't know of any group home equipped for that kind of care with vacancy. Hanover would have been my pick, but -"

"They're full," Olivia finished.

John nodded beside me, so quiet I had nearly forgotten he was there. "Even Chesapeake is full, Alex."

I played with my necklace, rubbing it between my fingers. It was the band I had given Casey when I asked her to marry me, and she had worn it throughout our marriage, however short it had been. I wore it after, about my neck. "Let me make a phone call. Maybe the Sisters know something."

Ever since Casey died, I had started going to church again. I still was not sure if I believed, but I was open to the idea of comfort provided by the ritual of religion. And, so many people there knew Casey. Plus, it gave me the opportunity to spend one morning each week with her parents. They had been amazing to me the past few months, and I could not have been more grateful. I called the domestic violence shelter run by Saint Micheal's Cathedral. It was a rarely given out number, and I was one of the few people who did not work there who knew.

"Saint Micheal's Cathedral, how may I help you?" a sweet voice answered.

"Sister Eloise, it's Alex Novak," I chirped. I might have asked Casey to marry me, but I had no regrets in choosing to take her last name. Even the sound of it made me feel better, like she was still with me. In small ways, she was.

"Alex!" the sister exclaimed. "What can I do for you, sweetheart?"

Licking my lips, I leaned against the wall. "I was wondering if you knew of any placements for children in foster care?" I asked, diving immediately into the explanation. "She was found today in a drug lab with her dead mother. She's starving and has meth in her system. The doctors say she needs daily visits for now. None of the foster homes I have can do that, and our group homes are full."

I heard the Sister pause on the other end. "God bless," she finally whispered. "Can she be placed out of New York City because we have a sister program with Saint Anne's about an hour and forty minutes north of the city. They run a group home for children with a medical staff on duty twenty four seven. This girl of yours would not be the first withdrawal case they've had. How old is she?"

I mouthed the same question to Olivia who held up four fingers. "Four," I answered.

"Bless," she breathed. "If you can bring her to the cathedral, I can have someone from Saint Anne's pick her up."

"Thank you, Sister," I said. Hanging up the phone, I explained to the social worker and detective the plan. Both readily agreed.

Olivia and I returned to the playroom with Bits, and I knelt down beside her. "Bits, I want to take you to meet some friends of mine. Is that okay? They're going to help take care of you, get you some clothes and something to eat. Are you hungry?"

She nodded.

"She ate at the hospital," Olivia said, "but, it wasn't much."

"Have you ever had a chicken nugget?"

She shook her head.

"Come with me, sweetie. We'll get you some. They're really tasty." I held out my hand, and she tentatively took it. I could see hunger in her eyes, but I understood her fear in a way. My biological father had threatened to starve me if I was not good, going so far as to not allow me to eat for days after I threw a tantrum. My mother had always snuck me food, but Bits had not had that.

As she walked, her hand in mine, both Olivia's and my badges in her other hand, she seemed to be in pain. So much so, that I crouched beside her and asked, "Bits, honey, do you hurt?"

"My tummy," she said. "And, my feet." Olivia's eyes went wide. I doubted she had spoken much before this, but she was far from where she had been hurt with a woman who had done nothing but protect her since she had been found. I had no doubts in my mind that Olivia had been nothing shy of territorial with the girl. She had a special heart for children. As Bits became more comfortable, hopefully, she would become more verbal, especially with her needs.

"You want me to carry you?" I asked.

She seemed to shrink into herself, quivering. She shook her head.

"Okay," I said. "You don't have to do anything you don't want right now, alright?" We began walking again, Olivia and John falling behind us as I headed to the cafeteria at the court house. I knew the church would feed her, and we could stop for food on the drive over, but I wanted to make sure she got some vegetables as well. I could tell, looking at Olivia, that she was considering the same. At least the food at the court house was healthier than a Burger King or something.

After a few feet, Bits stopped, her entire body shaking as she cried. "What's wrong, honey?" I asked, crouching beside her again.

She said nothing, only wrapped her arms around my neck, buried her face into my shoulder. After a second, I understood what she was wanting. Carefully, I picked her up. Her feet locked around my middle, and I cradled her against me. Her boney frame stuck into me, and while it did not hurt, it made me feel incredibly depressed. I hoped that she would start putting on weight soon. It made me sick to think someone had thought that not feeding a child was ever okay.

Olivia looked over at me, her eye brows popping slightly. Without words, I understood. Bits had not been touchy, even with me when I had first met her barely an hour before. She had attached to Olivia somewhat, but that seemed to be an open door to her wanting to receive attention from other adults. Or, I thought as I glanced to John, maybe just women. If her mother had tried to care for her despite the obviously dismal circumstances, maybe Bits trusted women.

The woman who owned the small cafe in the basement of the court house took one look at the tiny child and sighed. "She's so small," she whispered to me. "Alex, she's not here to testify, is she?"

I shook my head. "I practice family law, now, Mattie," I answered. "She was found in the basement of a house during a raid. Can we get her something to nibble at before we take her to the home?"

"Of course. What do you like, sweetheart?" Mattie asked of the child in my arms. Bits looked at her, giving long, slow blinks. "Not a talker, eh? That's okay. You have pretty eyes."

That earned her a small smile. "Nuggets," Bits replied. "Alex said nuggets." She looked at me, a mixture of question and anxiety on her face. "Is okay?"

"Of course, Bits," I responded, stroking her arm. "Whatever sounds tasty." I slid her over to my hip a little better, and she sat up, looking down at the food as Mattie filled a plate with nuggets and French fries. Bits pointed to sliced and grilled vegetable medley, and Mattie placed it on the plate.

"For me?" Bits asked. I nodded. She picked out a couple more things that I was sure she would not eat it all, and Mattie knowingly gave me a box to place it all in, too. The rest of us ordered sandwiches, and we sat down to eat.

"What do you think?" I asked as Bits took a bite of the nugget. With a broad smile, she nodded and took another bite.

Olivia leaned over to John and whispered something in his ear. He nodded in agreement, but I could not hear what had been said. "What?" I asked. "Did I do something wrong?"

"No, Alex," John assured me. "You're great. I know your background with the DA, but we really lucked out getting you as counselor."

I flushed a little at the sincerity of his compliment. "Thanks," I said.

As I predicted, Bits did not eat much. I placed everything left on her plate in the box. As I did, she gave me the most terrified look. "What's wrong, sweetie?"

"Uncle will be mad. I not allowed to throw food away. It's mean."

I stroked her hair. "Oh, well, we're not going to throw it away. We'll take it with us, and you can snack on it later when you get hungry again." She stared at me as if this were a foreign concept. I smiled warmly. "It's okay. Hold on to this box. When you feel hungry, pick something out of it and eat it."

"Oh," she said, and I placed the box into her hands. Timidly, she glanced to Olivia and John. "Is okay?"

"Yes," the other two adults chimed simultaneously.

We took Olivia's undercover unit to the church. I sat in the back with Bits, and she fell asleep on my lap. I marveled at the idea that the child could actually sleep given her trauma experiences. Yes, she woke up almost every time the car turned, but I would feel her fingers grip onto my pants a little tighter, and I would pet her hair, whispering that she was okay. It must have been close enough to something her mother had done because she would drift back into a fitful sleep each time.

"Alex," Sister Eloise said as she opened the car door for me so I could crawl out without disturbing Bits too much.

"Sister," I said, hugging her, "it's so wonderful to see you."

"I wish the circumstances were a little better," the older woman mused as she peeked in the car at Bits. In truth, if I had not known the little girl to be alive, I might have thought she was dead, she was so skinny and sunken, her little belly protruding the way it did with starving children. "God bless."

Reaching into the car, I picked up the child and cradled her against me. She gasped, twitching, and I saw utter fear in her eyes as she looked up at me. And, then, recognition settled in, and she draped her arms about my neck and closed her eyes once again. "It's okay, baby," I murmured.

Olivia closed the car door behind me, and I saw her exchange a meaningful look with John. Despite my annoyance and curiosity, I tried my best to ignore them. They were up to something, but I could not figure out what.

"Bring her in to the living room, Alex," Sister Eloise said, obviously clueless as well. I shrugged and followed her inside, laying Bits on the couch in the living room while the Sister covered her with a blanket.

"Is there a fridge I can put this in?" Olivia asked, holding up the take out box. "Snacks for later."

"Of course. It's in the kitchen. Here, let me take it. I can get coffee while I'm in there."

I watched Olivia smile. "I'll come with you, help carry the mugs out."

"Oh, you're a dear. Thank you."

I had a special fondness for Sisters Eloise and Mary Elizabeth. They were always so compassionate and genuine in their emotions. More than that, they were so grateful for every ounce of goodness. It reminded me of Casey on her better days, but she had been brought up around the church, and I could understand, too, with her parents where all the positive influence in her life and originated from.

I sat with Bits's head in my lap on the couch. John sat in a chair across from her. He gave me a gentle look. "She really likes you," he said.

I shrugged. "I've been nice to her, John," I said. "I haven't hut her. That goes a long way for a girl in her position."

He nodded sagely. "I keep forgetting that you've been in the system. What do you think of her case?" He nodded his head to Bits.

"Not a clue," I said. "I'd have to bet that she's Native just by looking at her, but I have no idea what tribe. I guess that would be something to try to find out first. Tribal courts might want her. Maybe they could place her with a Native family. If not, we'll proceed and try to find any biological family that would want to and be willing to care for her."

"I doubt she's even got a birth certificate, Alex," John said.

Pressing my lips together, I nodded. "I guess we'll have to find out about the woman she was found with. If we're lucky, we'll find something. If not, she'll become a ward of the State and placed for adoption."

He nodded, watching me quietly. He did that, from time to time. He would watch me the same way Olivia watched me, as if he knew something about me that I did not know about myself. I tried to push the sensation aside, focusing on the child in my lap.

"She's going to need a full medical work up and psych. The church does a lot of that based on donations and grants, but she may need more specialized care."

"The department can pick that up," John said with a nod. "We've got no choice. She needs treatment. She's going to need a lot of therapy, too, I would imagine. And, a few supportive people in her life. I doubt she'll get many visitors at the home."

"You know I visit all my kids in the group homes," I chided. "At least, the ones that want me to." There were a handful that did not want me to. I could hardly blame them. If I could, a part of me would want to bring them all home.

John nodded. "I know. You're good like that. It's why a lot of us at the department trust and respect you. Your heart is really in it."

"For the long haul," I murmured, fanning Bits's long brown hair over her shoulder. "What else were you thinking?"

"For now, just the standard evaluations and playing medical catch up. We'll monitor her weight closely. I was hoping you could asked Judge Warble for thirty day reports."

I nodded. "I can do that, just until she seems healthy again. Then, we'll move to ninety days?"

"I'm satisfied with that. Unless we can find tribal information or biological information about her, we're going to be visiting this case for a while. They won't adopt her until they find out everything they can. The last thing we need is for her to be adopted out and the parents want to give her back because of something missed."

"I don't understand why people do that," I whispered. "No child is perfect, but system children are already damaged and feel worthless. Why compound that?"

John shrugged. It was something we all struggled with. Many foster parents seemed to be in it for the child. Others not so much. It was sad, and as much as I tried to pull children in those kinds of foster homes, it was such a crowded system they were hard to place somewhere better. I was the only foster child my parents had adopted, but I was far from the only one who passed through their doors. Many of the children were, like me, repeat residents.

The system had a sad kind of revolving door that had made me feel unwanted as a child and made me feel sad as an adult. I met with little kids whose possessions were stashed in trash bags. I remembered my own experiences. I had been allowed twenty minutes in my old room to collect my belongings into a trash bag. I had not had much, a stuffed animal, some shirts that were mostly torn from childhood play, and a couple of pairs of pants. I remembered the blood stains still on the carpet from where my mother's body had been. My room had smelled of urine, and I had remembered being embarrassed because the cause was the fact that even at five years old, I still wet the bed. It was not until later that I had learned this was normal for children who had experienced the abuse I had. As a child, I had been shamed for it, threatened because of it, and sometimes, though rarely, hit because of it. It had taken my adoptive family almost a year to break me of it, and nightmares about the shooting would still sometimes make me wet myself until I was almost ten.

I could not imagine being eight, nine, ten years or older roving foster homes because adults would not understand. Yes, some of these children acted out. They skipped school. They did drugs. They had sex. They stole. They were in and out of juvenile detention. They were generally disobedient. But, they were children and they needed love and to be treated the same way all human beings did. They needed to be taught what safety looked like. And, safety, at least emotional safety, was not found by walking the revolving door. It was not in the promise of adoption only to be rejected – again – by parents.

I stared down at the child in my lap hoping against hope that she would not have to experience that. Truth be told, depending on her reactions down the road, there was a possibility that she would remain at the group home much of her life. She may have been younger at four, but prospective parents were seldom willing to deal with a four year old who had been so severely sexually abused and drugged. I would imagine that at her best, Bits was timid and frightened and cried. At her worst, she might have been very violent. After all, it was all she knew to be. Socializing the child was going to take a lot of work and love.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: It's been about 8 months since Casey passed from LTH, so there's going to be a lot of mention of Casey, things that will remind Alex of her, memories, places Alex visits that they went to, etc. There'll be scenes with Casey's parents, too. Alex is pretty close with them considering she's lost her own parents twice now. Thanks for reading. I'm glad it's going over well so far. I know it's a little heavy to get in to to start, but I likely won't get graphic. Alex will reflect a lot more on her past in this one, though, given her field of work.  
**

_**Chapter Two: Challenges**_

Bits remained asleep for a long time, curled on my lap while we waited for the worker from the group home up north to arrive. It was almost a two hour drive from what the sisters explained, but I was happy to wait. And, the child seemed content to sleep.

"Maybe you should wake her up for goodbyes," Olivia suggested. "That way, she doesn't fear going to sleep in a safe place with a safe person and waking up without her."

I nodded, though something in my heart tightened. Waking her up meant it was almost time to tell her goodbye. I had worked with almost a hundred children in the six months I had been doing this job. Why the thought of telling this particular little girl that she was going to be taken care of somewhere else, somewhere far away from me, was heart crushing, I did not understand. Maybe it was because she was so like me. Maybe it was because I was there in the play room with her, where with the other kids, I often did not come into the picture until after placement. Maybe it was because she had opened up to me, talked to me, held on to me despite the presence of other safe adults. Maybe it was just because it would have been my one year anniversary.

"Bits," I whispered, stroking her back. "Bits, wake up, sweetie." With some gentle coaxing, she woke up, her eyes wide as she stared up at me. I felt her body tense as if, in her sleep, she had forgotten that she was safe now. "Shh, it's okay, Bits. It's just me, Alex; do you remember?" Slowly, she gave a small, timid nod. "Olivia and John are here, too." Again, she nodded.

I stroked her hair again, running my thumb over her cheek. She looked up at me as I did so, and I gave her a warm smile. "Bits, do you remember me telling you about a home you could go live in?" She nodded. "We didn't talk much about it. Can we talk about it now?"

"Yea," she whispered, sitting up and drawing her knees to her chest. She looked at me with great, doe eyes, and my conversation got ever more difficult to have.

"Well, someone is on their way here to take you to the home. And, while you're living there, you'll be safe and they'll get you some clothes and a bed and blankets and food to eat whenever you're hungry. Does that sound okay?"

Bits nodded, but I could tell that she really did not understand. So, I continued. "Bits, do you understand what safe means?" She shook her head. "Safe means that no one there will hit you or yell at you. You will get lots of hugs if you want them."

"Will you come? You safe."

I smiled. "I am safe, yes. But, sweetie, I won't live at your house with you. You'll live in your house. I have to live in my house. But, if you will let me, I will come over and say hi to you at your house."

"Okay," the child replied, her fingers curling around her shoes. She licked her lips, rocking on the couch. "Will you sing the bunny song?"

"I don't think I know that song, Bits. Can you teach it to me?"

She nodded. "Itsy bitsy bunnies playing on the ground," she sang, rocking more intensely. "Baby Bunny hides when the bad man comes around. Itsy bitsy, itsy bitsy, itsy bitsy, boo. If you make a noise, the bad man will get you."

"Where did you learn that song?" I asked, trying not to show my alarm over the lyrics.

"Momma teached me," Bits murmured, her head down.

I knelt before her, taking her hands in mine. "Bits, who is baby bunny?"

"That's his name," she answered.

"Whose name?" I asked.

"Baby Bunny."

"Was Baby Bunny a baby?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No. He was -" She held up two fingers.

"What happened to him?" I asked.

She shrugged. "Bad man got him. He didn't hide."

"Bits, honey, how many other children were there?"

Bits shrugged. "Not know," she answered. "Sorry." She looked like she was genuinely about to cry. I exchanged a glance with Olivia. There were possibly more children out there who had been with Bits and the other child she called Baby Bunny.I had to think that they were mostly nicknames. It made me wonder if Bits had a different name, a real name. Maybe she did have a birth certificate. If she had been kidnapped from a family, then she was missed. Maybe the toddler had been taken, too.

"It's okay, Bits. It's okay," I reassured her. "You have nothing to be sorry for. Did these children live at the house with you?"

She shook her head, her fist in her mouth. "Did they visit you?"

"We vis't them," she babbled looking severely worried. "They with Mommy."

"Bits, honey, the woman that Olivia found you with in that house – was she your Mommy?" I asked, and I could even feel the detective behind me, anxious for the answer. Bits shook her head. "Who was she?"

"Aunie," she answered. "She Aunie. Bad man Ukle."

I nodded. "Oh," I said. "Okay. I understand now. Thank you, Bits." I glanced to Olivia who had her lip between her teeth. The child climbed into my lap, her thumb in her mouth as she curled against me. I had the distinct impression she thought that someone was coming for her. Nevertheless, I held her in my arms, tight enough she knew I was there, light enough that I did not cause her harm.

"Liv," I said, "when do you want to do her interview?" If there were other children who were potential victims involved, I knew that the time line for Olivia's case just went up from several weeks to that night, if possible.

"When we get to the group home," Olivia said. "I guess we're not saying 'bye just yet. I'm worried that she'll return to a non-verbal state if you're not here, Alex. Do you have time to come with us?"

I nodded. "Absolutely, Olivia. I can call the office and let them know that I'm helping out a child interview. I'll call Lydia and let her know she's on her own this afternoon." I checked my watch. Court had been back in session for about twenty minutes. I figured I would start getting phone calls soon. I had been pulled out of court by a social worker and then left with a police detective and a malnourished child. Some things, I knew my boss could tolerate. Extended absence for the day, though, she would start to become worried.

Olivia nodded. "Why don't you give them a call, then. I have no idea how long this will take. It sounds like a lot more was going on than our intel gathered."

I silently agreed. But, I said nothing as I pulled out my cell phone. "Bits," I addressed the little girl in my lap. "I'm going to go outside and call my boss and tell her that I'm going to spend the afternoon with you so we can talk. Is that okay?" She nodded. "I need you to stay here with Liv and John. I promise I'll be right back."

Her eyes went wide in fear as I moved her back onto her own couch cushion. Standing, I heard her wordlessly cry out. I looked down, catching her fingers with mine as she reached up to me. "Baby girl, I'll be right back. I promise. I'll hold you again when I get back. Okay. Do you want my badge?" I picked it out of my pocket, and she took it, still looking at me as if I was going to leave and not return. It made me wonder whether or not her relationship with her mother had been positive or not. But, the whole point was that we were going to try to find out.

My boss was willing to pawn me over to the police department for a child interview. She thought it would be helpful to have an attorney present who worked in the juvenile system and since Bits was more verbal around me than anyone else, she figured it would be a, and I quote verbatim, "bitch move" to not allow me to be present during questioning. I had a certain respect for the woman who was only a couple of years my junior. She was something else entirely, but she was a natural with family court.

"I'm clear," I said as I tucked my phone in my back pocket and returned to the couch where Bits had not moved from her position on the couch, my badge still in her hand. I opened my arms to her, surprised at how readily she crawled into my lap, her tiny hand twisting in my shirt as I held her against me. "Baby girl, do you know any police officers? Anyone other than me and Olivia who have badges?"

Bits nodded. "The nice man," she said. "He telled me it was secret. Shh. The bad man can't know. The nice man promised to save me."

I nodded my head. "Bits, was the nice man there today, when the police men came and took you?"

Bits shook her head. "No. Bad man made nice man go away. Nice man went to sleep."

Pressing my lips tight together, I looked up at Olivia. "Detective Tucker," she clarified. "He was undercover. The raid was because his cover was blown. He was shot. She must have witnessed it." I nodded, stroking her hair. I closed my own eyes, vague memories of my own mother's murder floating behind my mind's eye. "He survived, Alex. He was in the OR this morning, but Fin said he's slated to make a full recovery."

Glancing down at the child in my lap, I met Olivia's eyes. "Maybe we can introduce her. It might help. We can explain that Tucker sent his friends. It might build a trust to law enforcement as well as human services, especially if she witnessed more than Tucker was able to convey before the raid. We're going to need that if she's going to stay open during a criminal investigation."

"I'll look into it," John said. "It might be a good idea, though, especially if it won't damage the criminal investigation."

"It won't," Olivia said. "I'm sure Tucker will appreciate it if he knows Bits survived. I've never met the man, but he broke cover to reassure a frightened child. It'll mean a lot to know she's safe."

I nodded, adjusting the child in my lap. Bits lay her head on my chest, a thumb in her mouth and her other hand wrapped in my shirt. "I hear your heart," Bits mumbled.

"Yea, baby," I answered. "What does it say?"

"Thum thum," she answered.

I smiled. "Good job. Does your heart say thum thum, too?" She nodded. "Who else's heart says thum thum?"

She looked up at me, her eyes wide and brimming with tears. I cradled her head as I rocked her, her sobs making me think that her body was going to break. I wrapped my body around her, humming to her, though not the song she had recently taught us. "Someone holds me, safe and warm; horses prance through a silver storm; figures dancing gracefully, across my memory," I sang softly. It was a song my nanny had sung to me when I was a little older than her, shortly after the Cabots had adopted me.

I sang the song softly until the tears stopped, and she looked up at me, cuddled in my arms. She seemed to enjoy being held like a small infant, so I held her in my arms as I looked down at her. "Hello, precious girl," I murmured as she blinked, staring up at me. "You're safe now .The bad man won't get you."

"Am I interrupting?" Sister Eloise's voice was pleasant to hear, and I broke eye contact with the girl, looking to the sister. "Oh, she's adorable. I found some things in our donation center that I think she will like." The sister set down the small box she was carrying, and I leaned forward a little as the girl showed interest in its contents.

Sitting on the table beside the box, the sister pulled out a shirt. "What do you think, Bits?" she asked. "It has a kitty and a puppy on it. Do you like kitties?" The little girl silently shrugged. Sister Eloise just smiled and folded the shirt in her lap. "What about this?" She held up a pink and green zip up hoodie with a watermelon on the front.

"That's very cute," I said enthusiastically. She was wearing a white shirt and sweatpants that had been rolled several times to keep them up because she was so small. I had no idea what she had been found in, but that was all in evidence and she was going to need her own clothes. Taking the sweater from the nun, I held it up. "You want to wear it?"

Bits nodded, and I helped her to put it on and zip it up. "You look very beautiful," I said, and she leaned against me again as if to watch the rest of the show. The sister went through a couple more shirts and two pairs of pants before she got to the games she had found as well. The child in my lap was much less interested in the games, and I guessed it was because she did not understand what was happening. I doubted that her abusers would lock her in the basement and allow her to play games. It seemed like it did not fit everything else in her life.

When the nun picked up a small dark blue box, she offered it out to me. I hesitated, not prepared to directly give the girl anything, especially not what I was being handed. The psycho-emotional symbology was not lost on me, and it brought back memories of my own past. After a second, I took the box from her hand and held it out to Bits. "Can I give you something very special?" I asked her. "I need you to take care of it for me."

"Tay," Bits said, looking at me as if I had grown a second head.

I smiled. "It's a necklace you can wear always, and it means that someone will always look out for you, no matter what. It means that you're important, Bits, and it means that you are loved. The sisters you'll be living with at Saint Anne's can probably explain it all better than I can. I'm still learning about it all myself. But, I want you to know that it also is a promise from me to you that I'll look out for you in every way that I can. No matter what happens, if you're feeling alone or afraid, you can hold on to this, and you'll know that I will protect you how I can but in every where that I can't, God will." I had a hard time believing a completely benevolent god of any kind would put a child through as much Hell as Bits had already been through without intervening earlier. But, I knew at St. Anne's, she would get a lot of religious attention, and I wanted to make sure she could focus on feelings of safety and security whether that was associated with religion or not.

Opening the small container, I pulled out a plastic and metal light yellow rosary, and I held it in my hand. "Do you want to put it on?" I asked. She could learn about the rosary later. I was asking her to hold on to the trinket as a token of the fact that she had people who would look out for her now. It was a foreign concept to the girl, but if it was implemented early on, I could probably keep her trust not only through the criminal process but also the civil process. This was one child that I would visit at least weekly until she was adopted. Stability would be a good thing in her life.

As she nodded, Bits reached for the necklace and put it on over her head. I took the cross between my fingers and pressed it gently into her hand. "Whenever you're afraid, Bits, hold on to this, okay? And, if anything scares you at the home, any of the adults will protect you."

Bits nodded, holding the cross tightly in her hand. Feeling my heart go out to her, I wrapped her back up in my arms. "What are you afraid of, Bits?" I asked.

She shook in my arms. "Ukle," she murmured. "He be mad that I talked."

"Uncle can't hurt you any more, Bits," I replied. "Olivia and the nice man and their friends took him away to a place where he can't hurt you. And, you're going to go somewhere where he won't be able to find you. You'll be safe."

I held on to her for several more minutes until her grip on the crucifix lessened, and she put her hand on my cheek. It killed me that this kind of abject abuse happened in America. The country was supposed to be iconic of freedom, health, and happiness, but for little kids like Bits, it really was anything but.

A knock on the wall caught my attention, and I glanced up. "Excuse me, Sister Eloise, Joan Sanders from Saint Anne's is here," an older woman announced. I remembered her vaguely. She was a volunteer with the shelter, and I had seen her at church when I went. Her name escaped me in that moment, so I just smiled.

"Thank you, Beth," the sister replied. "I'll come up to the lobby. Alex, when you are all ready, you can bring Bits?" I nodded my agreement. It would be easier to explain to the girl before introducing another new person.

"Bits, can we go to the home? Olivia and I are going to go with you." I stroked her cheek, and she just looked up at me with sad eyes. I sighed knowing that separating from her was going to be difficult at its easiest. I twisted until I could pull my badge from my pocket. "Why don't you and Olivia go to the car? Hold on to my badge, okay? I need to pick up something of mine from Sister Eloise." I gave her a warm smile, and she reluctantly nodded.

Standing, Olivia held out her hand. Tentatively, Bits took it and walked to the entrance with John and Olivia. My attention turned to the sister who looked like she was struggling to not cry. We all were. "Sister," I said, earning her attention. "Thank you. Is there any way I can get a stuffed animal or a trinket of some kind? I think it'll be easier for her when I leave St. Anne's that I can leave something behind that I will have to "get" from her in a few days."

"Of course, sweetheart," she said, her hand on my arm for just a moment. She gave my arm a soft squeeze and offered an apologetic look. Despite our church wedding, the sisters and the Father were aware that Casey and I had been legally married before that date. I had told Casey's parents shortly after her death. The detectives had taken pictures, and I had wanted them to have some. They had told me that Casey looked happier in those photos than she had at the church, but the intimacy had explained everything. Despite her ability to be a social butterfly, the was an inherently private person, happiest when she was with the people she knew best.

When Sister Eloise returned with a stuffed animal dinosaur – a yellow and orange brontosaurus – and handed it to me. "When you're done with the child, Alex, if you want to come back, I'll leave the bolt out of the back door."

I smiled. "Thank you. I'll stop by. Is Sister Laurie on the night shift?"

"Yes. She'll be up at the desk most of the night. She'll be happy to see you again if you do decide to stop by." Eloise smiled, hugging me gently. I hugged her back. While dealing with Bits and the fact that there was more than one child involved in this entire mess, I was able to put the fact that today would have been my one year wedding anniversary on the back burner. I did not have time to grieve even though my heart desperately wanted to.

I nodded. "Thank you, Sister," I murmured. "If I have time, I'll come by. I may take advantage of the emptiness in the worship hall."

"God helps relieve pain and suffering," the sister told me, her voice soft.

"So do his angels," I murmured. I smiled. "We should go. The sooner we can get her settled at St. Anne's the easier it will be for her to adapt. I don't want to keep traumatizing her." I bit my lip, running my fingers over my shoulder as I half hugged myself. It was turning into a very stressful day of the nature I had not had to deal with since I was an ADA. Family court was an entirely different ball game. I was less concerned about what had happened to the children as a professional and more concerned about what would happen to them in the future. It was very, very different than looking at a case to convict someone for what had been done.

Pressing my lips together, I sighed. "I never thought I'd be part of the chase again," I mused, mostly to myself, but a part of me wanted someone else to know. That was the unexpected part about SVU. That was why I had asked to be transferred into the unit. That was why Casey had stayed even though every case broke her heart a little more. Normally, as the prosecutor, we got the information after the case had been solved, when the detectives had a suspect. Occasionally, they needed warrants to pick up a suspect, but they had all the pieces put together. The SVU detectives pulled us into the hunt. They used our intellect, connections, and experience to solve the crime. I had participated in late nights digging through files, looking at pictures from unsolved cases, trying to help them piece things together. I had been a detective, though I was still more the prosecutor. Still, it was one of the few units where the lawyers were so intimately involved. The carnage I had left behind me seemed to have a way of wiggling back into my life.

"The person who did this to her is still out there?" Sister Eloise asked me.

I nodded. "We don't know who her parents are, either. For all we know, she could have been kidnapped and the woman she thinks is her mother is not. Or, worse, her mother could very well have sold her."

"Or they could both have been victims of the same person," the sister added. I nodded my head. That was absolutely true. If Bits had been visiting her mother, it could have been a taunt which meant the detectives would probably be dealing with some kind of human trafficking ring. It made me wonder if Bits' mother would have wanted to see her. Was Bits a child of rape? I questioned whether or not the toddler that Bits said had been killed wasn't her younger brother.

Shaking my head, I sighed. "For the sake of her mother, I hope not. If her mother's going through similar hell that Bits went through, and they've already been raided by the police, they'll probably kill her at worst, move her at best. Either way, she's in danger."

"How do you figure this out?" the sister asked me.

I shrugged. "That's the specialty of the detectives," I answered. "Bits probably knows something. It's just a matter of making sure the right questions get asked and Bits feels safe enough to disclose. Chances are, she's got no idea she knows anything. It's going to be a game of guess and check, and if Olivia's wrong, Bits may shut down completely."


	3. Chapter 3

_**Chapter Three: Homeless **_

"No, want go with Alex," Bits yelled, pulling away from the social worker and running to me.

I held her against me in a quick hug. "Bits, sweetie, Olivia is going to drive me. Joan is going to drive you. That way, you can get to know Joan a little better, okay? She's my friend, so she's safe, too." I ran my fingers over Bits' cheek. She was warm and her skin was moist from sweating. I had noticed it while she was sleeping in my lap, but I figured she had just been warm. Now, I knew she was coming down from the high. There was a potential for her to be volatile, moody, and withdrawn on top of being physically ill. She was in for a rough night.

"No," Bits cried, hugging my neck even tighter. She trembled, but I could not tell if that was from the drugs or anxiety. I knew there would be a lot going on with this girl psychologically, so at that point, the symptom could have been either or both. I worried about how quickly she had attached to me but how standoffish she still was with John and Olivia. At least for a little while, she would probably see more of Olivia than she would me because, as generous as my supervisor was, she was not that generous. Plus, I had several more children that needed a legal voice in the system. Most of them had Guardian Ad Litems as well, but not all of them had been assigned yet. I usually caught the cases before the GALs did. On a rare occasion, a child would come into the system with a GAL. Usually, those cases were on recommendation from other open cases including criminal cases or divorce cases.

"How about I buckle you in, Bits, and you can hang on to my badge? I'll get it back from you when we get to your home."

She stared at me with tears in her eyes, her lower lip trembling. I felt badly for the girl, but Olivia and I needed to talk about some aspects of the case that she should not overhear. Plus, she was going to need to become accustomed to being around Joan. The longer she was with me in some way, the harder it would be to break apart once we were at the shelter. The two hour drive would be a good chance for her to reset.

I held out the stuffed animal dinosaur. "Bits, this is my friend Andy. Andy's going to come with us on the car ride, but he's really afraid to ride in cars. Do you think he can ride with you to your home? I think you would be perfect to hug him on the ride. Then, when we get to your home, you can tell me how well he did in the car and how you helped made him feel safe because I know you'd be very good at making Andy feel safe, right?"

She nodded slowly, reaching out and taking the dinosaur. As she hugged the toy against her chest, I walked her back to the car and opened the car door. There was a child seat in the back, and I helped her climb in. I had not expected that Bits had been in a car very often, and she definitely did not know what the booster seat was. It took some fumbling, but I buckled her in and gave her a kiss on the forehead. "Okay, Bits, Joan's going to drive you to your home, but Olivia and I will be in the car right behind you. Remember, Andy needs lots of hugs to not be scared."

Bits nodded, hanging on to the dinosaur in one hand and her crucifix in the other. I stroked her cheek before standing up and closing the door. Through the window, she watched me, shaking, her lower lip trembling. I had to turn away before I started in on the tears, only I did not have half the reason to cry as she did.

"We'll follow you up," Olivia said to Joan. "If she says anything about where she was living or anything about her past, I'll need to know. It'll help me ask questions. She comes from more than just a drug house. She might know something about a trafficking ring."

"Poor girl," Joan said, shaking her head. "I'll let you know if she says anything." Joan bit her lip and glanced at me. I shrugged, chewing on my lower lip. I really knew about as much as she did at that juncture. I had been able to fill in some of the gaps, but not many. I was hoping the short road trip would give Olivia a chance to fill me in.

Olivia pulled out of the parking lot after Joan's red Honda, and I leaned back in my seat, closing my eyes. "It's been a hell of a day," I murmured, shaking my head.

"I bet," Olivia said. "Thank you, though. I really appreciate you coming out and doing this. That kid's gonna need all the support she can get."

"No kidding," I murmured.

"How are you doing?"

"I'm alright," I said with a shrug.

Olivia nodded. "If you need to talk, Alex, you can talk to me. About Casey or your own childhood."

I looked at Olivia, my brow knit. "No. Right now, we need to focus on Bits. She's going to be tough to place in foster, Olivia. Her psych issues are already abound." Pressing my lips together, I shook my head as I licked my lips. "Depending on whether or not she acts out sexually, that'll just make it even more difficult. A four year old with sexual problems does not place easily."

Sighing, Olivia nodded. "Yea," she murmured. "We'll see how she does over the next few days. I'll let you know what we find in the case, too."

"Thank you. Knowing her history will help me advocate for her in the system, maybe help her to get the right kind of therapy or monitoring. It'll also give me a clue as to her medical background. I doubt she's ever been given her shots, so she's in for a whole series of them over the next few months. I doubt she even got medicine when she had a cough, though. She's so starved. Whoever held her didn't care about her well being. As bone thin as she is, there's just no way." I shook my head, staring at my hands. "I still can't process it, you know? A hundred kids. They all get to me, but this one – I've never seen abuse like this, not in this country. This is like the pictures of kids I saw in the ICC."

Olivia's eyes went up. "Tell me about it," she said, giving my hand a squeeze. "Even in the neglect cases we get called on, they're rarely this bad. It's so depraved. I want every man who touched her. They raped a starving, dying girl. The cruelty of her entire life is just -" She shook her head, unable to continue.

"What do you know about the case already?" I asked, trying to make it a factual basis issue. I wanted to distance myself from Bits, make her a case file in my head so that I did not go home that night and cry all night. I had done a lot of crying in the past eight months, and I was ready to be done.

Nodding, Olivia knew what I was trying to do, and she played it perfectly. She may have dealt with the cases better by being close to the victims. I had never dealt well that way. Getting close to the victims nearly destroyed me every single time I did. "Tucker was in under cover on a drug trafficking ring. The intel came through that the house was a meth house. They found Tucker dumped in an alley when he didn't check in with his handler this morning. He was alive but barely. They busted the house a few hours later, found Bits with Jane Doe. She was curled up by her stomach."

I nodded, my hand shaking as I raked my hand through my hair. "Sounds familiar," I murmured, exhaling slowly as I tried to control the images in my head. I had not thought about my childhood in years. Casey made me face a lot of it, but it had exposed more than it had healed, and now I had a child on my docket whose trust in the world had been utterly betrayed. I may never have been sexually assaulted or rarely beaten, but children are so dependent on the adults in their lives. Watching my father beat my mother senseless had damaged my trust. Being beaten and raped and starved by the man who was supposed to care for her – whatever his role – had damaged Bits' trust. The way she clung to me was so familiar and frightening. It was the way I had clung to my adoptive father almost immediately after my mother had died. Bits was in for some very long years and a rough teenagedom if my experiences were anything to act as a base. I had been loved and cared for regularly in a stable home environment, and I had been a teenage mess. Unless we could find Bits a home that was safe and stable, she would have an even more difficult time.

"Your own mom?" Olivia asked me.

I nodded. "Yea. The priest who found us found me curled at my mother's stomach somewhere between asleep and delirious."

Olivia nodded. "Are you going to be okay in the interview room?" she asked.

"Yes," I affirmed. "I'll be fine. That was thirty seven years ago. Bits is dealing with it now. She's a lot more important than anything I'm dealing with."

"You miss her?"

I snorted. "Every second of every day, detective," I answered. "Both of them. All three of them." I shook my head.

"Are you afraid of getting close to anyone else?" Olivia asked.

"Um?" I questioned, my brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

Olivia merged onto the freeway behind Joan's car. She bit her lip as she glanced over to me. "You took a job in family court pretty quickly after Casey passed."

"Casey told me to get back into law, that I needed to return to my passion. She was right. Doing this has helped me more than sitting at home ever could. I became a prosecutor because I wanted to help people. I was naive to think that was the only way to obtain justice, but I learned quickly. By the time I was an SVU prosecutor, my loyalties were so close to the law that I forgot about victims. I never really recovered from it. Casey was the closest I came." I shrugged. "It never did make sense to stagnate. If I had done that, I'm pretty sure she would have come back to haunt me."

"And kick your ass," Olivia laughed.

I chuckled. "Yes. She would have done that. If anyone could find a way to do that from beyond the grave, it would be Novak." She had held an interesting legal career, going off on people for all the right reasons. She had not cared about her law career so much as she had about doing the right thing. Initially, I had assumed she was reckless. Once I actually started to know her, I realized that she had nothing to lose. Her legal career would not matter twenty years from now because she had always known she would not have been able to enjoy it. So, she had done the next best thing – she had made sure that twenty years from now, the wrongs she had been able to help set right and the wrongs she had been able to prevent were meaningful to the people she helped, not because she had done them but because it was the right thing to do. She had stood to gain nothing. In so many ways, she was the closest person I had ever met to Atticus Finch.

"Well, if you need to talk or vent or go out for coffee, let me know."

I pressed my lips together, nodding. I had stopped drinking alcohol when Casey and I had become serious. She could not drink alcohol, so I had given it up, too. I had no need to keep drinking, really. And, when I had left the DA's office, a lot of my stressors had disappeared, too. They were replaced with new stressors, but not enough to drink. When she had passed, I had never bothered to start drinking again. The detectives knew and had offered me to go out drinking with them only to hand me a Sprite as I walked in. I appreciated them for it.

"Maybe we can do coffee tomorrow morning," I suggested. "I'd like to just talk, not necessarily about any cases, including my own." I smiled softly.

"You got it, Lex," Olivia said. She bit her lip and gave me a warm smile. She really was the big sister I had never had. "I'll pick you up from your office in the morning. We'll call it a business meeting and let you get away from human services for an hour."

"So, what do you think about Bits?" I asked, not wanting to talk about my personal life as we drove to untangle yet another broken life. It seemed, sometimes, that it was all that life was. One break after another. It did not matter where or who or what, but everything eventually broke. And, it was up to us to help put it back together.

Pressing her lips together, Olivia sighed. "She's either kidnapped or born into that situation. I hope to God she was kidnapped because otherwise, the conditions in which she has been living her entire life are intense. The doctor sent all of the medical tests to Warner's office to see if the ME can give a better time line."

"What about family? Is anyone out there looking for a missing Native girl?" I bit my lip, shaking my head.

"Nick and Amanda are looking into it," Olivia advised. "So far, they're not finding anything. No missing persons reports in New York or the surrounding metro area." She shook her head and sighed. "They're going to be getting in touch with the FBI to check the other states."

I nodded. "I can't believe no one is missing her," I said. "It's so wrong." I licked my lips and sighed. "I mean, how do you not notice as a doctor that a women you treated who was pregnant doesn't have any children or as a teacher that a child disappeared?"

"If she was withdrawn or the mother said that she adopted the baby, it would have flown under the radar," Olivia said. I knew that, but I still could not understand why this was something that happened. It was not right. It was why I went into law in the first place. I had been an intellectual. I could never be a police officer. I could shoot a gun, but I doubted that I could take a life like that. Pro death penalty, yes, but only when someone else had the needle. I had been called a coward more than once for it, and maybe they were right, but I could do something with a law book and a court room.

Sighing, I shook my head. "That doesn't mean I have to be able to understand it," I mused. "You just let me know if there's anything I can do to help on this case. I want to find the other children and make sure they're safe and placed appropriately if they need to be placed. Ideally, they don't need to be going to group homes, but they may get more professional care there than at a foster placement."

"Don't go jumping the gun, counselor. We may not locate any other children."

"Nevertheless, I'd like to be prepared." I flashed her a warm, positive, work smile. Really, it could go one of two ways. There would be no more children located, and all of my attention in this case would remain on Bits. Or, there would be children located, and we could either be in a small mess or a mess up to our ears on the human services side of things. One or two more children would not cause us to scramble. Ten or more children, and we might be scrounging, at best. It was difficult enough, I was learning, to find appropriate foster homes for all of the children already on my docket. There was such an epidemic of child abuse in this country that it was terrifying, really. I had learned quickly that while I saw some fairly atrocious horrors as a prosecutor, it had only been the tip of the ice burg as far as facing and dealing with the aftermath of child abuse went.

Parents and care givers might go to prison, but there was still a lifetime of work ahead of social workers, therapists, and attorneys like me to help a child get back on track – or to get on a track they had never been a part of in the first place. Bits was like that. She had never known the "right" track. It had been a lifetime of abuse, and for a four year old, even a few months could be a lifetime.

Olivia looked over at me, her eyes sad. "If there are more children, I hope we find them. But, for their sakes, I hope there aren't any."

I nodded my agreement, my lips a thin line as I considered not just the legal ramifications but the psycho-emotional ones as well. Since returning to family law, I had begun to realize that there was so much more to the human development than I had even dreamed. I knew there were hardships in every criminal case I prosecuted, but the more time I spent in human services court, the more I was coming to realize just what those hardships were. The more I could see myself, too, in some of the children I worked with. There was a reason I visited the ones that wanted me to. They needed someone. At their most vulnerable years in life, they had been abandoned whether maliciously or by the sill of a system trying to protect them from harm. Sometimes, I felt like the improvement in foster care was not enough to make a difference.

But, in the words of my good friend Elizabeth Donnelly – it was the system we had. For all its flaws, I worked in it, around it, through it, and over it to fight for the legal rights and safety of the children on my docket. I had long ago given up the delusion that I was fighting in the system for justice. Justice seldom came from the legal system.

Olivia pulled into the parking lot behind St. Anne's, and I stepped out of the car, happy to stretch my legs. I was seldom in a car for that long only because I did not travel out of the city very often. Even when I did take vacation – on that rare occasion – I spent most of my time at home relaxing. There were things that I had not gotten to do that I had planned to do with Casey. We never did make it to our honeymoon. I had promised her I would take her somewhere. We did not get that far, and I think a part of me was was reluctant to go places because of that. In so many ways, I still felt guilty. But, she had proved to me that life was not only fleeting and fragile but that life could be lived with strength, dignity, and humanity. As short as Casey's time had been, her impact had been profound – at least on me and several of the people she had been surrounded by.

Bits jumped out of the car and raced toward me, hugging me tightly. I held her against me. "You're so brave, Bits. Did you hug Andy all the way here?" I asked, squatting down to her height.

"Yes," she said, holding the dinosaur out to me.

I took him back, holding him against my ear. "What's that, Andy?" I asked. I nodded, pretending to listen to the stuffed animal. "Oh, yes. I agree. I think Bits is an excellent hugger. You want her to keep giving you hugs? Well, okay. If that's okay with her. Yes, I'll ask." I held the dinosaur out in my hands like an offering. "Andy loved your hugs so much, he wants to know if you'll keep giving him hugs. What do you say?"

"Otay," Bits mumbled, sticking her thumb in her mouth as she swayed back and forth. She took the doll from me and held it against her, hugging it tightly.

"I'll tell you what, since you're such a great hugger, why don't you keep Andy here with you? I work a lot, so I don't have a lot of time to give him hugs. I bet you can find tons of time to give him hugs, though, huh?" Bits nodded. "If he stays here with you, can I visit him every week, though? Please."

"Yea," Bits said, nodding. I watched her eyes brighten just a tiny bit, and I reached out and stroked her cheek.

"Can you go with Joan? She'll show you around your new house and you can meet the other children who live here." I watched Bits as she tensed, her eyes wide with fear. "Bits, all of the children who live here live here because it's safe. No one hurts them here, okay?"

"No," Bits mewled, trembling again. "No." She wailed that one word as I cautiously picked her up, holding her against me until she broke down into sobs.

"Honey, I'm going to go with you, okay? Olivia and I will stay with you for a little while. I promise. And, I'm going to come visit you and Andy every week. Joan and the other Sisters will have my phone number, too. You can call it any time, okay, Bits?" I held her against me, stroking her hair. It was soft and smelled faintly of honeysuckle, and I found myself wondering where she had picked that up from since the hospital shampoo was not normally scented.

I carried Bits into the group home, setting her down in a private playroom. "Do you want to play with the toys with me?" I asked her as Olivia disappeared. I figured the detective was looking for recording devices, preferably a video recorder. I was betting the home would have one. It would not be the first time a child was interviewed by police at the home.

Bits shrugged, staring at the box of toys I had pulled down like I was strange for suggesting something like that. I picked out some oversized building blocks and laid them across the floor. "Will you help me make a tower?" I asked, stacking the blocks on top of each other. Bits just stood and stared while I sat on my knees building the tower ever higher until it was too unstable to stay up and the blocks crashed down.

Bits screamed making me jump. Her eyes squeezed shut, she screamed even as I pulled her close to me and held her, rocking her. "It's okay, Bits. It's okay." I smoothed my hand over her hair as I rocked her. "It fell, that's all. It's okay. No one got hurt. No one will get hurt. Okay. Remember, we're in a safe place."

Gradually, her screams subsided and she sobbed into my shoulder. "What's wrong, honey?" I asked her when her sobs turned to sniffles and she seemed more residually afraid than still in the crisis moment.

"Bin be mad," she whispered. "Bin say no messes. Bin say toys not for play. Say only if grownup says."

"Bin?" I repeated. "Do you mean Ben?" She nodded. "Ben said you couldn't play with the toys unless a grownup said you could?" She nodded again. "Did grownups say you could often?" While Bits had been screaming, Olivia had returned to the interview room, the camera set up and ready to go. We could back track if we needed to, but I had a four year old ready to disclose certain information. I was not going to risk shutting her down by telling her, effectively, that the information was not as important as she clearly thought it was.

Bits shrugged. "Sometimes."

"Okay, Bits," Olivia said, kneeling beside me as she put the blocks back in the box. "What happened if you made a mess at Ben's house?"

"Go outside," she said. "He maked us sit under the tree nekid."

"You were naked?" Olivia asked. Bits nodded. "Then what happened?"

Bits shrugged. "Come inside and take baf. Go sleep in baf."

"What do you mean? Was the bathtub where you went to bed?" Olivia asked.

Bits looked up at me, and my heart broke just a little bit. I knew exactly what she meant, but I understood Olivia's need to have her say it. The child looked confused and in pain, like she did not know how to explain herself any clearer. I glanced at Olivia who nodded.

"Bits," I said, stroking her thinning hair. Starvation made the hair fall out, and I was torn somewhere between disgusted that another human could deliberately cause such a situation and heart broken that it had to be this little girl in my lap. "I'm a grownup, right?" Bits nodded. "So, if I tell you that you can play with the toys, then it's okay?" Again, she nodded. "Okay. See over there, that doll house? Can you take a doll and show us what happened when you took a bath?"

I felt the little girl curl against herself. No matter the environment she had been raised in, the child intrinsically knew that what had happened to her was bad. It probably did not help that she was likely told over and over that it was her fault. If she had just listened and done as she had been told, she would not have to be punished. It was the mantra of abuse. My father had screamed it at my mother when I was her age while I hid behind the couch. When my mother passed out, if his rage had not simmered, he turned on me. It had been mostly verbal for me. It was mostly physical for Bits, but the dynamics and the results were similar. Both left a scared and scarred child, unwilling to trust the world but desperately needing someone to latch on to.

Moving my hand, I rubbed her arm gently. She still jumped, recoiling from me. Pressing my lips together, I looked at Olivia as I rested my hand against my own leg. In that moment, she was still in my lap, tiny fingers curled around the sleeve of my other arm, so she was not afraid of me. However, we both knew we were traveling steadily towards a fear response.

Olivia changed the subject, affirming Bits' control over herself at the same time. "Okay, honey, we won't talk about that right now, okay?" Bits nodded, putting her fingers in her mouth as she sank back against me. "Can you tell me if you ever went anywhere else? You lived at Uncle's, you went to see Mommy, and you went to see Ben, right?"

"Bin lived wif Mommy," Bits said.

"Okay, good. Good job, Bits," Olivia said. "Can you tell me what the house looked like? Do you remember walking inside?"

The little girl shook her head, but as she did so, she turned and pressed her face against me. It was a sure sign that she knew more than what she was saying. "Honey," I said, "if we can find Ben, we can make him go away so he can't do bad things to you or other kids. And, maybe we can find Mommy."

"Mommy?" Bits repeated, looking up at me, her eyes searching my face. I could not tell from her expression whether or not she wanted to see her mother again, though. I had a feeling that she had not had many interactions with her mother. She had probably bonded better with the captive woman she called her aunt. Child interviews were always difficult. A preschooler's perception of the world did not offer a whole lot into reality. Although, it did offer an honest view into the child's life. We took what we had to go on.


	4. Chapter 4

_**Chapter Four: Mother **_

Bits had devolved from being able to host a conversation to sitting silently in my lap, quivering, her fist in her mouth. If I tried to touch her, she would flinch. If Olivia tried to touch her, she would whine. I did not know how to comfort the child who could not be consoled. What had been done to her had completely terrified her of the men she called Ben and Uncle. She did not want to tell Olivia about them much for fear of being punished by them. Based on her physical state, I did not blame her.

"We're not getting anything, Liv," I murmured, shaking my head. "She's too far gone."

The detective nodded, pressing her lips tightly together. "Bits, would it be okay if we walked around your new home?" she asked. I knew it was ideal to get more information regarding possible other children in contact with Bits, but pushing her harder was not going to help. Even a completely different topic did not rouse her from her trace like state.

Gently, I rubbed my hand against her arm. She yelped, whimpering. I pulled her to me and turned her so that she was facing me. She was yelling and screaming, thrashing as I moved her, but she was too weak, tiny, and sick to cause damage. I held her arms against her, cradling her in my lap, my arms wrapped around her. I held her up and pressed my forehead against hers. "Swing low, sweet chariot, comin' for to carry me home," I half whispered, half sang. I could not even hear me over her screaming, but she had stopped thrashing. "Swing low, sweet chariot, comin' for to carry me home. I look over Jordan, and what do I see? A band of angels comin' for me."

I skipped some lines and some verses, but the more I sang softly, the more she quieted until she was staring up at me, her tiny mouth open, brows furrowed as if in question, but she was watching me intensely. She wriggled her hand from my arms and rested her fingers against my lower lip. Carefully, I curled her hand in mine, kissing her palm softly. "It's okay, baby girl," I whispered. "You're safe now. You're safe here. I promise."

Her head lolled in my arms, and I picked her up, carrying her to her room. Olivia pulled the blanket back, and I laid Bits down. "Sleep well, baby girl. I'll see you in a few days, okay?" She nodded, her eyes heavy. I planted a kiss on her forehead. Quietly, Olivia handed me the dinosaur, and I tucked it against Bit's body. She wrapped her arms around the toy, watching me, her big eyes blinking. I stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame, watching her until I was sure she was asleep.

Olivia and I stayed another half hour. Aside from Bits' room since the third bed was empty, they were three kids to a room within two years of each other. I had seen the other child in that room, but her back had been to me, and I had not known if she had been awake or not. In the morning, a doctor would see Bits, but, in the mean time, there was a nurse on duty over night since many of the kids had medical problems that ranged from mild to severe. The nurse and I had a long conversation about Bits coming off of drugs while being so fragile. I believed her when she told me that she had experience handling it.

I still did not want to leave, and when we did, I huddled in the car and stared out the window. The sun had set, and outside of the city, the sky was really dark. It was strange, almost spooky, and my stomach turned. "Wait," I said. "Pull over."

Olivia did, and I climbed out of the car, staring up at the sky. For once, there were no street lights in the way of the stars. In the distance, I could see the beaming lights of the city. Even so late at night, the place looked like dusk on the horizon. But, there, between suburbia and rural New York, it was dark. I stared up at the sky. My arms still tingled from Bits' weight. In that moment, the wind whipped around me, and I lost the fight against the tears. My lips went tight over my teeth as I crouched down, tugging at my hair in a last ditch effort to control my emotional pain with physical pain.

I was not aware that the high pitched careening was me until Olivia's arm looped over my back, her hand on my knee. Dropping to my knees, I leaned into the detective who held me as I cried. "I want her back. It's not fair." She held me softly as shook, my fingers around her jacket. "It's not fair. I miss her. I miss my wife. Why her?"

"I wish I knew," Olivia murmured.

By the time I stopped sobbing, it had dropped another ten degrees, and I was shivering as well. Olivia's skin was cold, but she did not act it. Sitting back, I wiped my eyes. Olivia dug a tissue out of her pocket and handed it to me. I blew my nose, stuffing it in my own pocket to toss later. "I'm sorry," I whispered.

"For what?" Olivia said. "For missing Casey? Alex, I was starting to get worried because you've been stoic all day about it. It's about damn time you cried. It's your first year anniversary. You have every right to want her to be here to celebrate it with you."

Tears threatened to overwhelm me again. Nodding, I stood up. "Can you just take me home, please?"

"Of course," Olivia said.

She drove me home in silence. I refused her offer to walk me up to the apartment door, and I stumbled in myself, my mind and body utterly exhausted. Still, I could not sleep. I spent the night crying off and on, my heart hurting not only for the fact that my wife was not with me on our first anniversary but also because I had children on my docket that I knew would not make it, children who were damaged beyond repair, and children who would have scars for the rest of their lives.

It was nearly two when I fell asleep, unable to keep my eyes open any longer, though I did not feel at all rested when my alarm clock went off three hours after telling me it was time to get up. I had a case slated for eight am, and, after, Olivia and I were going to be going to coffee. I could not miss the first, and I did not want to miss the second. I needed the opportunity to be with my friend without the grey cloud of work hanging over both of us.

"Novak," my boss said as I walked into work that morning. He seemed surprised to see me. I supposed Candice passed on to him that I was approved to be out all day yesterday, but, in typical Candice fashion, she probably forgot to tell him why I was out. It was no secret in the office that I had lost my wife several months prior. And, Candice had a penchant for forgetting to pass information along.

"Hi, Tom," I said, offering a tired smile. "It's good to see you, too."

"Candice just said you were out yesterday," he said, shrugging. "I figured it was some kind of anniversary."

Pressing my lips together, I nodded. "It would have been our first year anniversary, but I was a couple hours upstate with the newest child on my caseload. I'll have her file to you by noon. I have a meeting with the detective on the case after court this morning."

"I'm sorry," Tom said, his hand covering my arm with a gentle squeeze. "I'll look at her file when you give it to me. I was planning on covering your court case this morning. I've read your notes. They're very thorough. If you want to take the day for your anniversary since you had to work yesterday, I would approve that absence."

I nodded. "Alright, Tom," I said. "Thank you." I did want some time to myself, but I was not sure that I wanted to be alone. "I'll call the detective and see if we can move our meeting up."

"Alright. Hey, Alex, take care of yourself. There are going to be a lot of anniversaries. If you need to talk, let me know." I had nearly forgotten – he had lost his wife seven years prior. Even though he had remarried since then, he knew the pain of the first few years.

"Thanks, Tom," I said, biting my lip. "I'll drop off that file, and then I'll see you tomorrow."

"Okay," he said. "Take care."

I ducked into my office and collected the paperwork for Bits' file, organizing it into the file folder. I typed up my standard motions and I left the file on Tom's desk around the same time Olivia arrived at the human services building where I worked. It was nearly perfect timing, a habit the detective had started when I was still a budding prosecutor for Special Victims. She had only honed it the closer we had become after Casey's death.

"You ready?" Olivia asked me as she leaned in my office door.

"Just about," I murmured, shoving a file into my attache and closing it.

Olivia gave me that skeptical look she was so fond of using. "We're going for coffee, Alex, not a road trip."

"With you, I never know," I quipped, smiling warmly at her. "Besides, after coffee, I'm headed home. Tom's giving me the day since I worked yesterday. He wants me to grieve."

"What do you want?" Olivia asked as we walked to the stairwell. The elevators in the human services building were slower than mud, and trotting the stairs was usually faster. The exception was if I stayed late. Then, I always took the elevators down. I could not explain it, but the stairs after hours just gave me a bad feeling. Of course, I would never have confessed that to Olivia.

"Alex? You're drifting."

Shaking my head, I shrugged. "I don't want to grieve," I finally answered. "Remember, yes, but not grieve."

"Isn't grieving just remembering?" Olivia asked me.

I shook my head. "No, I don't think it is. I think it's remembering sadly and thinking about all the things missed. I've done a lot of that. I still do, and I suspect I will continue to, at least, for some months. But, today, I don't want to do that. I think, today, I'll make about the future, my future."

Olivia smiled, laughter on the tip of her tongue. I could not quite tell if she was considering rolling her eyes at me or not, but she did not. Instead, she just gave me that classic look of hers. The one that said I was talking with clarity about things I did not understand. And, maybe she was right. I have never been a profound person. Anything inspirational that has ever come out of my mouth has been purely incidental and without planning which is terrible for a lawyer and a socialite of my caliber.

"Besides that, I want to call St. Anne's about Bits and see how she's adjusting." I pushed open the door to the building, sliding my sunglasses onto my face. "And, before you give me that look, Miss Benson, I will remind you that I give all of my cases personal attention."

At that, Olivia did laugh. "What look, Mrs. Novak?" she asked, tipping her head and grinning at me.

"The one you and John could not stop exchanging yesterday. What was that about?" I asked, my voice deliberately neutral. With Olivia, I sometimes had to be careful and pretend like I already knew the answers in order to get answers. She had a habit of thinking I knew and not telling me. Either that, or she just liked messing with my head. I was never one hundred percent sure which.

Shrugging, Olivia tucked her hands in her pockets. "I have no idea what you're talking about," she mused. I gave her a disapproving look. She frowned, but she did not wither the way she once had as a young detective. I had been a young prosecutor, then, surprised at the intimidation tactics that had worked on the detectives when I had first been assigned. But, then, I had been there to rein them in. After Olivia turned fifty, she just kind of stopped being afraid of anything. I think outliving the expected lifespan of an SVU detective in terms of her career lifespan had just made all the fear run away. Some days, that worried me. It left behind a lot of anger. I knew because I felt that anger, too.

"Have you ever considered being a foster parent?" she finally asked me.

For a moment, my steps faltered, and I had to make a quick second step to stop myself from falling. I knew she noticed, but the question really had caught me off guard. "Is that what this is about?" I asked. "Olivia, you know I'm not ready for that. Not right now, probably not ever."

"You'd be a good mother," Olivia said. "And, you know what these kids are going through."

"I had one foster family, and they adopted me, Olivia. I have no idea what these kids are going through. Besides, I don't have the time to devote to just one child like that. I have almost fifty children on my case load right now, Liv. I owe each and every one of them as much time as I can muster. If I took on just one child, that's forty nine others who aren't getting the attention they deserve." I frowned, chewing on the inside of my cheek. That aside, no child needed to deal with my crazy emotional life. I held myself pretty well together in the public eye, but there were nights when I went home and the silence was so deafening that I had to go out again, even if it were just to a park to sit and read.

Olivia just nodded, that knowing smile on her face like I would eventually cave. Casey and I had had those conversations about children, about if she were not dying. Or, at least, if she had not been so immune depressed that a simple cold brought in with a child from school would send her to the ICU every time, Casey had wanted to raise children. I would have been happy to raise a child with her, but being a foster mother on my own was just too daunting a task. That, and I doubted that I would have been a great mother, anyway. Casey had been the nurturing one. She had brought out the good in me, but that did not mean that I would be the best mother. I did not tell Olivia that, though. Those had been hard conversations, and they still tugged at my heart strings because Casey Novak had never had the chance to love a child.

If I was honest, her devotion to making the community better for its youngest members probably had a lot to do with why I was practicing law for human services. In order for her to agree to allow me to use Cabot money to cover her medical costs, I had agreed to donate the same amount of money to a fund for children. Before we married and even after, despite her lack of personal income once she could no longer work for the DA, it had made her uncomfortable using my money for anything. She had been more open to the idea of using it to benefit others, and I had loved her only the more for it.

Something warm pressed into my hands, and I blinked. "You spaced out," Olivia said. "Raspberry white mocha with two pumps of hazelnut." I smiled, taking a sip. "You thinking about her?"

"Yes," I said, biting my lip. "I can't stop. I mean, it's been eight months. You'd think I could turn it off by now."

"No," Olivia said. "You love her. You're supposed to think about her a lot. You're supposed to remember her when you see things she would have liked or wanted or even been repulsed by." Olivia squeezed my hand gently. "Like I said, I was starting to get worried about you. You've been pretty devoted to work, and, with you, that's not always a good thing."

I sighed, leaning back in my seat. "I guess not," I murmured, setting the cup down. "I love my job, Olivia. Don't read that out of this. But, I catch myself working longer hours when I start thinking about Casey and everything that happened. I miss her so much. It's like part of my soul was ripped away when she died."

"That's understandable, Alex. No one is going to fault you for feeling that. You two had something not many of us get in life."

I smiled. "What about you?" I asked, biting my lip. "Have you thought about being a foster parent?"

Slowly, Olivia nodded. "You've heard about Baby John Doe that they couldn't place for a lengthy time?"

"Yea," I said. "He's cute. Jane's assigned to that one, but we've conferenced a couple of times on it. Didn't they ID him?"

"Noah Porter," Olivia said. "Yea. Um, the judge asked me what I thought about becoming his guardian."

I beamed. "Really? And? Did you put in your application?" I felt excited. Olivia had wanted to be a mother for as long as I had known her. I had always known that she would be a great mother if she pursued that avenue. The hardest part about Olivia becoming a foster parent was that she had a job that would pull her out of the home at all hours, and she did not have someone else living with her who could babysit in the middle of the night.

Olivia nodded. "I did. Yesterday, actually, after we got back from upstate. Seeing Bits and seeing you with Bits made me want to pursue parenthood. I'm not getting any younger, Alex, and Noah deserves a loving mother, especially what happened to his mother." My brow furrowed before I could stop it. I really had not been following the case that much. "She was murdered." Olivia shook her head.

"I'm sorry, Liv," I said, knowing that look. It was one she wore when she had lost someone on a case. The heart break was real, and it had never ceased to surprise me how attached Olivia got to her cases. Her humanity kept so many of the rest of us grounded and sane. Some days, her humanity frightened me. I often thought it would get her killed in the long run. But, it was refreshing and a bright light in a very, very dark tunnel. "You'll be great for him, though. Let me know if you need anything." I paused, considering for a moment. "Including a midnight babysitter when you get called out. You're always welcome to drop him off with me on the way to a crime scene."

She smiled. "Thank you, Alex," she said. "That – that means a lot to me." The smile Olivia gave me was one I had not seen since my early days as a prosecutor when I would do something that baffled or delighted her. Back then, that had been difficult to do, but I had managed to pull it off. As we had gotten to know each other, and she realized that I was not a political war machine, that smile had come up more and more until she had adapted to who I was as opposed to what I pretended to be in the public domain.

"No one needs to be a single parent, especially not someone with as many friends as you have. Besides, I'm sure he'll mostly sleep, want to be fed, and maybe changed overnight. I can always drop him at daycare or back at your apartment if you have a nanny."

Olivia chuckled. "I haven't even been approved officially, yet," she chided. "Although, the judge did ask me to apply, so I'm fairly certain I'll get to foster him. I'm so thrilled Alex."

"I'm thrilled for you," I said, sensing the 'but' even though I was not going to prompt it. I knew her all too well. After all, we had long been best friends.

"I'm terrified I'm going to be a terrible mother. Or, even if I'm not, that I'm going to get too attached, and some wonderful family is going to come along and want to adopt him, and it's going to break my heart."

I smiled. She was so very Olivia, and that concept made so much sense. Olivia was just too Olivia for her own good, sometimes. "But, you will be happy knowing that the time he spent with you was safe and protected and happy and that you got to make a difference for him, this little boy who knows nothing of the world and very little of love and devotion. And, for the record, you will absolutely not be a terrible mother."

"I appreciate the faith you have in me, counselor," she said. "Actually, I would really, really be honored if you came over and met him once he's settled in a little. I mean, I'm hoping that they'll tell me I can really meet with him and get to know him today or tomorrow so that I can bring him home." The sheer excitement on her face was something I had not seen from her in years. I think we all, as women, hit that age where we just don't think motherhood is an opportunity any longer. Olivia was fifty, unmarried, and worked more overtime than anyone that I knew. Biological children may have been out of the question for her for other reasons as well. At any rate, I could not see Olivia attached to a man for the next eighteen years just for the sake of having a child. It left adoption as her most reasonable option. And, I had not been lying. She would not be a terrible mother. Quite the opposite, I was sure she would be wonderful. No matter how long Noah stayed with her, he was going to be happy, healthy, and loved in her care.


	5. Chapter 5

_**Chapter Five: The Color of Wild**_

"Thank you, Annette," I murmured, leaning back in my seat, my phone to my ear. It was late morning on Friday, and I planned on spending the afternoon and weekend visiting with some of the kiddos on my cases. I had a lunch "appointment" with Jeremy, a fifteen year old who had been in a group home for the past five years. Underneath it all, he was a sweet kid. He had been one of my first cases when I was hired, and I knew he would stay on my docket until he aged out of the system. He had some serious behavioural problems that foster parents were unable to deal with on a regular basis. He was placed in a home, and, usually, a week or so later, I would get a frantic phone call from the foster family wanting to send him back. I could not imagine the emotional toll that took on him as a teen, and I certainly could not blame him for acting out.

In fact, he had acted out with me quite a bit at first. The first time I had visited him, he had called me all manners of names and threatened me if I came back. Two days later, I was back. And, again, two days after that. When he realized it was going to take a lot more than idle threats to scare me off and that I really did was to get to know him, he had started opening up to me more and more. We had weekly lunches unless he canceled them, and that had given him a lot more control over his life than he had experienced before. Sometimes, I was sure he called me to cancel lunch just to see if I would respect it. I always did, and now, I knew more about his personal life than any other adult he had contact with. There was a very good reason why I got on well with the social workers.

"Hello?" a tiny voice asked as the line clicked back on.

"Hi, Bits," I purred, a smile instantly in my voice. I had called to check on her every day throughout the week, but because she had been coming down from a high cold turkey, the doctors had not let me talk to her. I was glad to be able to talk to her that day, though I had been cautioned to keep the conversation short while she was still adjusting to her environment. I was going up on Sunday morning to St. Anne's, though, and the staff there had arranged for me to take Bits to lunch after mass. I hoped to make it up early enough to attend mass with her.

"Hi," she chirped.

"Do you remember me? We met a few days ago." I wondered how much of that day Bits remembered and how much had been eradicated from her memory because of the drugs.

She hesitated for a few seconds, 'umm'ing over the speaker. "Chicken nuggets," she finally said.

"Yea," I breathed. "We had chicken nuggets. Do you remember?"

"They were tasty. We have mac and cheese here." She sounded all the more precious now that she was not dazed from the drugs. I was impressed at the difference not being high had on the clarity of her voice and the amount of talking she was willing to do.

"Yum. That sounds tasty, too," I said, mimicking her verbal language. It was a tactic with children to get them to trust and open up to us as the investigative adults. Half of the time, anymore, I had no idea that I did it, but I knew, especially with Bits, that I was going to have to mimic and gain her trust quickly. There was still the possibility of other children in the custody – whether or not lawfully – of her abusers, and that did not sit well with any of us.

Olivia had been keeping me up to date on the criminal case, but there were simply not any leads coming in from the crime lab yet. They had DNA to run and prints to check through AFIS – the Automated Fingerprint Identification System – but those things took time. I feared that for any other children involved, time was something they were seriously lacking in. But, I left the child interviews to Olivia. The detective had been twice to St. Anne's, but Bits' disposition while recovering from drug addiction had made talking to her difficult. I had opted not to attend because I did not want her to associate my visits with talking about all of the negative aspects of her short life. Olivia and I had agreed that keeping those separate would be crucial to Bits' recovery and her ability to help the investigation. My primary concern was, in terms of my current career, her recovery. That did not mean that I did not want to do my part in the investigation.

"Bits," I asked, my words careful and slow. "Do you remember my name?"

"Um," she murmured, holding the 'mmm' sound for several seconds again. "No. I sorry." She sounded like she was about to cry, and my heart went out to her.

"That's okay, Bits," I said. "It's Alex. Do you think you would be okay if we talked on the phone some days?"

"Yea," she said, her voice brightening.

"That's great," I said, beaming. Even I could hear the smile in my voice. I had no idea why, but I had attached to this little girl in the few heart beats that I first met her. When she had let me carry her, it had sealed the deal in my mind. My heart had found someone tiny and fragile to attach to, and I would personally make sure that her adoptive family when it came down to it met with my highest standards. "What do you like to talk about?"

"Um," she said. Bits whimpered, sounding distressed.

I recovered her anxiety, though, with some thoughts of my own. "Do you think we can talk about Andy?"

"Andy?" she questioned. I softly heard a voice on the other end of the line tell her that it was her toy dinosaur. "Oh. Long neck."

"Long neck?" I queried. "Is that his name?"

"Yea," she said.

I smiled. I could not help myself. For some reason, I could not stop grinning. "That's a great name, Bits. How is he doing?"

"Good."

"Good. Did you take him on any adventures?"

"No," Bits said. "He sick." She seemed more engaged in the conversation now, which I took to be a good sign.

"Oh, no. Are you taking good care of him to make him get better?"

"Uh huh," she mumbled. "He goes to dokt with me. Dokt give hugs and kisses."

Closing my eyes, I sighed. She was much more alert and active even in the not quite week she had spent at St. Anne's. It was amazing what a drug free and stable environment could do for a child. "Does the doctor give you hugs, too?"

"No," Bits answered. "Not want." In those two words, she sounded sullen and angry, and I could not blame her in the least. She had been hurt by hands she had been meant to trust. The instant connection between the two of us was next to unheard of, particularly with this level of abuse.

"Okay. That's okay. I'm glad you told him you don't want hugs." I really was. I was more surprised at the fact that she was even remotely vocal about her comfort levels. Considering how regularly those comfort zones had been violated, I had mostly expected her to be willing to allow any violation to occur. So, really, I was quite proud of her. "Did you go outside and play today?"

"After lunch," Bits said. "See dokt and then go play."

We talked for a few more minutes, Bits with her short answers and me with my easy questions, and then she handed the phone back to Annette, one of the case workers in the group home. "Thank you for letting me talk to her. Would you do me a favour and remind her about my visit on Sunday? I don't want it to be a shock for her. I feel like, right now, that's a bad idea."

"Sure thing. Are you planning on coming up regularly?" Annette asked. She seemed to be a very kind woman over the phone. Judging by her voice, I would have put her around my age, and her articulation of issues in the field led me to believe she had been in the human services field for some time.

Biting my lip, I considered my schedule. "It's a bit of a drive, but I am hoping to make it out at least once each week. I visit all of my kiddos regularly. But, with Bits, it may have to be a weekend visit just because of the trek out there."

"Understandable. We have staff every day. We do have mass Wednesday evening at four and Sunday morning at ten at the Catholic church down the road, so unless you want to go to mass with her, we just ask that you not visit during those times."

"Actually, can I attend mass with her on Sunday? I hope to get up there early enough to do so. However, don't mention that I will go to mass with her. I don't want to let her down if the drive up takes longer than planned."

"Yes, I can definitely do that," Annette agreed. "We'll just talk with her about you visiting on Sunday. We won't say when. I'm sure she'll be thrilled, Alex. I really do think she remembers bits about the day you brought her up here."

I smiled. It was always great when the younger children remembered who I was after their first meeting with me. Bits remembered the chicken nuggets, so that told me, at least, she enjoyed those. I would remember that going to visit her, though for our first meeting at the group home, I intended to take her to the deli nearby for sandwiches. It was easy enough and gave me a chance to talk to Bits alone about how she was adjusting and what she liked about the home. "Thank you, Annette," I murmured.

Hanging up with the social worker, I grabbed my bag. Generally, on Fridays, I cut out after lunch with Jeremy, taking work home to finish up after I made my rounds with my group homers. It gave them someone to meet with regularly, and I had about ten of the fifty on my case load in group homes at that point. In two and a half days every week, I generally did manage to meet with all of them for an activity or a chat. Some weeks, it was easier talking to the kids than others, but I supposed that came with the territory. I had, after all, been a wreck after witnessing my mother's murder. It had been a drawn out impact, too, despite the counseling I had gotten. I had been an angry kid. In some ways, I was still an angry adult.

When I pulled my car up in the parking lot, the front door of the house burst open, and a gangly fifteen year old boy bolted towards me. Surprisingly, he gave me a quick hug before opening the car door and dropping his back pack in the back seat. "Alex," he beamed. "I have got to tell you about school."

I laughed. "Alright. I want to hear, but let me check in with Wendy, first. You know the rules. Come on, kiddo." I draped my arm around him and walked him back up to the house where one of the staff members was waiting, her hand on her hip.

"Jeremy, how many times have I told you? You need to wait inside for Alex to sign you out."

"I know," Jeremy said. "I'm sorry." He looked genuinely apologetic, but we both knew the next time would be similar. I rarely showed up to him sulking any more. In the beginning, he had, but at this stage, he treated me like an aunt who spoiled him. And, I guess, compared to what he was accustomed to growing up as well as at the home, I really was the aunt who spoiled him even though all he got from me was my time and attention.

"Wendy," I mused, smiling at the dark haired woman.

"Hey, Alex. Come in. We'll get Jeremy checked out." She smiled secretively. "To be fair, he's been wanting to talk to you all week, waiting for your lunch day with him."

I nodded. Whatever it was, he considered it to be pretty important. That made me happy for a number of reasons, but the main was that Jeremy was starting to consider milestones for him as reasons to be proud or happy or feel good about himself. When he got a good grade on a test, a copy of it usually showed up at my office. I tried to always congratulate any student who showed off his or her academic accomplishments to me. I had one girl who had been so ecstatic to be accepted to SUNY for college that we had gone to lunch, and I had taken her shopping for dorm room supplies to give the space her own flair. She had been a case I had been handed when I started, my only legal role there to close the case on her eighteenth birthday. Still, I had visited with her and talked with her about her dreams for the future, and I had been shocked to receive the phone call I had when she told me she would be going to college. It was not so much that I did not think that she could do well – she struck me as a bright girl – but more that I was surprised I had made such an impression on her that she wanted to tell me.

I signed Jeremy out for the afternoon, turning to him. "Alright, we're free for lunch," I said with a shrug. "Think you can spill the beans on this exciting news over fries at Seven?" Seven was a popular little diner a few blocks away. Jeremy and I ate there regularly enough that most of the servers knew us. Plus, there was an arcade there that he usually liked to blow off steam at. I had actually learned early on that he tended to be more honest and open with me while he was killing dinosaurs in a Jurassic Park video game.

"Heck yes," he said. "And, milkshakes?"

I laughed. "Yes, and milkshakes." The kid had spunk. I had to admit. It was interesting working with him because his general attitude with other adults on the case was a lot more rough than it was with me. Without their input, I would have said he was adjusting well. With their input, I knew he was having trouble. According to his counselor, Mishelle, Jeremy had an immense fear of disappointing me likely stemming from the fact that I had taken a non-professional interest in his world including taking him to lunch and talking with him in a way most teens associated with rarely sought after parental advise. In short, I had a fifteen year old boy on my hands who believed that if he disappointed me in some fashion that I would abandon him. While I was a touch, well, touched, I was also cautious and alarmed. He needed support, but I was worried about him being so worried I would leave. That was just the thing – eventually, his case would close out. From what I gathered, despite the best intentions, it was more rare than common that anyone from the case kept in long term contact with the newly aged adults or newly adopted children.

"So, what's this news?" I asked him as the waitress set a large basket of fries between us and dropped off my vanilla milkshake and Jeremy's Butterfinger fudge milkshake. We had already put in our lunch orders – and, by that, I mean that he had put in his. I almost never ate more than a couple of handfuls of fries and a milkshake.

He beamed. "I asked Jordan to Homecoming," he told me. Underneath the 'bad boy' exterior, he was shy and had not talked about having an interest in dating, so I was a little surprised about his disclosure.

"And?" I finally prompted, looking at him over a fry. "What's the verdict?"

"I got a yes and a kiss on the cheek," he said, blushing slightly.

I smiled. "Congrats," I said. "So, what's the plan?"

He stared down at his hands. "It's not like I don't know how to date or anything, I mean, I've dated and stuff -" He fumbled over his own bravado, and I had to work to suppress the smile.

"Right, and I'm the Queen of England. It's okay, kiddo. I won't tell the press."

Pressing his lips together, Jeremy nodded. "Thanks, Alex," he said. "I, uh, I don't know where we should go to dinner. I mean, I don't have a lot in common with the kids at school. They all know I live in a group home, and some of them are pretty dbaggy about it."

I nodded. "I tell you what, I know the chef at an Italian cafe on the west side of Central Park. You give me the date and the time, and I'll make sure a table is waiting on you with a gift card so that you can pay and impress this Jordan." I winked at him and smiled. "And, uh, I'll talk to my friend and see if he'd be willing to play chauffeur with his Town Car. "

"Really?" Jeremy asked, his eyes wide. "I mean, I can't pay for that. DHS won't let me get a part time job or anything."

"We'll call it a favour," I said, nodding. "You can owe me."

"Yea? Okay. That's awesome. You're awesome. Oh my God, he's gonna be so excited." The colour drained from his cheeks as he stared at me.

I just smiled. "I'm glad," I said. "If it's your first date, it may as well be memorable for both of you."

He gave me a soft smile, nodding as he bit at his lip. "You're the coolest," he said, though I watched as his smile faltered. Mine missed a beat, too, my brow pinching. His next words were so quietly whispered that I was not certain I heard them correctly. And, even then, I was not sure if I was meant to hear them. "I wish you were my mom."

Unsure of how to respond, I just pretended that I did not hear him. I had never had a child on one of my cases as a criminal prosecutor and as a DHS attorney tell me they wished I was their parent. Admittedly, I would not have thought that it would be something I would run into. I should have prepared for it, but I did not really think that someone would want me as a parent.

Fortunately, Jeremy did not want to linger on that topic and the waitress returned with his food. "Um, so, you're okay with Jordan -"

"It's none of my business, Jeremy," I said with a soft smile. "You fall for who you fall for, and there's nothing wrong with that." Absently, I fingered the wedding band around my neck, my thoughts falling to Casey. The one person in the world I had not thought I could ever be friends with, let alone fall in love with, I had. And, there was nothing wrong with that.

He grinned. "You really are the coolest, Alex."

I chuckled. "Yea, I know," I teased, winking. "Now, eat before Wendy accuses me of starving you." He laughed, and our conversation centered around how he and Jordan met – apparently in the freshman physics class – and how school was going for him. He said everything was going well. I told him I was going to check his grades on Monday, but he knew I would. I checked up on him several times throughout the semester. I checked up on all of my kiddos as far as their academia went. I tried to stay on top of their successes and their struggles as much as they wanted me and as much as I needed to to do my job.

After lunch, I dropped Jeremy back off at the group home and drove home to change out of my work attire before going and seeing two other kiddos, Laurie and Caleb. They were twins who had been sexually abused for several years before DHS was made aware and removed them from their homes. They were undergoing a great deal of therapy not only for the abuse but for the on and off incestuous relationship they had. At twelve years old, they really did not know what they were doing, and housing them was proving difficult. At present, they remained in two separate dorms on one of the few homes that allowed both sexes to reside. One corridor was girls' rooms. The other was boys'. And, there was a locked door between them so that girls could not go onto the boys' side, and vis-a-vis. During the daytime, the kids congregated in common areas including a living room, kitchen, dining area, and patio and small yard.

None of those of us working the case were particularly happy about the arrangement – the two managed to sneak off into a corner still both with each other and with other kids, usually older than them. But, separating them into two different placement homes whether group or foster had resulted in Laurie being hospitalized for an attempted suicide and Caleb being arrested after he hit his foster mother with a baseball bat and hospitalized her with a concussion and several broken ribs. The foster father had walked in from work as Caleb was alternating kicking and striking her with the bat. Caleb had been released to the group home with charges pending in adult court. More than anyone, I understood the desire to charge Caleb as an adult, but he really did not know what he was doing. His mind was so beyond warped. I seriously doubted that he would be able to survive anywhere outside of a group home environment on heavy medication. Even with the sedatives he was given, he was still oversexualized with other children as well as with the staff, including me. Laurie would not be able to handle much more. My guess was that the courts would commit her to a psychiatric facility the first time she endangered the well being of another, and there was no way she would be getting out. Not guilty by reason of mental defect.

It angered me so much that their mother had, for lack of a better term, pimped them out to any pedophile who would pay her. Neither child had ever been to school. It was likely that neither would. She had messed them up so badly, damaged them so severely, that when I watched them, I could see no flicker or glimmer of childhood. They had not bonded with anyone except each other, and their unhealthy attachment was dangerous. They had also never been with someone safe until their removal from the home. Everyone in the world was an enemy, and no matter how stable and kind we were, it broke my heart to think that, for these two children, the rest of their lives would be a battle between what they knew from the abuse and what they had the potential to become. I never wanted to call a child hopeless, but those two were about as close as it came.

Some people did not deserve to be parents, and some of those people were parents for far too long. The actions they took against their children could not be taken away. We could not pretend like it did not happen. Even tiny infants were impacted by abuse with the abuse they suffered when small often shaping their demeanor and personalities as they aged. These children were broken of their trust. So many times, they loved parents who did not love them, or parents who loved drugs and alcohol more than they loved their children. Only a very small handful of my cases were children without parents, genuine orphans who had been loved and cared for and were frightened at the unknown world splayed out before them. Even still, most of my cases with orphans were with children abandoned at fire houses or hospitals and children whose parent or guardian died of a drug overdose or drunk driving incident.

My heart went out to them, and it broke. I thought about my own childhood and my father, drunk and angry, screaming at my mother while he threw whatever objects were close at hand towards her. I remembered pretending to be asleep on the couch while peeking through the slits of my eyes as my father pinned my mother down. I remembered the priest as he picked me up, pulling me out of the pool of cold, sticky blood. And, I remembered wrapping my arms around him. I had asked to go back to the Cabots' house, strangely aware that I would not be returning to my own home, that my mother was gone for good, even at such a young age.

I thought about Bits and how frightened she must have been when the detectives took her from the cold body of the woman who had been doing what she could to care for her. I thought of Jeremy and Laurie and Caleb and Claire and Annalise and Todd and Chance and Gabbie and Juana and Ray and Samantha and Luis and the forty or so other children on my case load, and my heart clenched. As I pushed the tears from my eyes, my car parked outside of the group home where Laurie and Caleb were housed, I thought about Olivia's push to try to get me to consider fostering, but I realized why that would be such a problem – I would not want to let any of them go, and I could not take care of all of them.


	6. Chapter 6

_**Chapter Six: Safe and Sound**_

I lay on my back on the floor staring up at the ceiling pondering how I got so old and wondering if I was going to be able to stand up without assistance. I was still in my early forties. That was not really that old. At least, that was what I kept telling myself. I was almost halfway to one hundred, and that seemed old to me.

"I see a puppy," I finally said, pointing up at the popcorn ceiling in the bedroom at St. Anne's. "There's its ear, its nose, and its wagging tail."

The girl next to me scooted closer to me, the dinosaur I had given her clutched tightly in her hands. "I see," she said, and I turned my head to see her expression. She had no idea what I was talking about.

Chuckling. I sat up. "How about you show me your favourite thing to do at your home," I said, and she considered me for a moment. I had shown up at mass, slipping in the back and finding her. The nun beside her had moved over so that I could sit with her, and by the end of mass, Bits was sitting in my lap, dinosaur squished between us. Since then, she had not wanted to separate from me. She had known my name when she had seen my face, so that was reassuring, and she had held tightly to my hand, pulling me around with her as she gave me the tour of the group home and introduced me to a couple of the other children there.

"Colour," she said after several moments of deep thought. "Colour wif me, Licks?" she said, excited. My name off her tongue sounded exactly what a person did to ice cream in a cone. I was "Licks" and, for some reason, it made me feel good to hear that sound.

Nodding, I stood up. I was beginning to feel that in my knees and hips, and I figured it would be a downward spiral from there. Still, working with the age group that I often did, it would be a long time before I was not getting up and down off the floor. "Alright. What shall we colour?"

Bits led me out of her room and over to the common room where one of the Sisters was reading a book to a group of half interested children, some who came and went as they pleased. She directed me to a shelving unit filled with books, some of which were, indeed, colouring books. "Dis," she said, pulling out a book filled with cars and tractors.

"Kay," I murmured. "Let's go get crayons, and then we'll leave Sister Anna to finish reading, okay?"

Nodding vigorously, Bits grabbed a box of crayons from a tub and pulled me back to the room she shared with Ayla, a six year old with learning disabilities who had been relinquished by her parents into the custody of the state because they "did not want to deal with her." Annette had given me the run down on the children Bits spent the majority of her time with, and she and Ayla had clicked. Ayla was completely non-verbal and fell on the autism spectrum, though to what degree, I did not know. Ayla was, apparently, on an outing with one of the volunteers from the church. I was pleased to see people take an interest in the lives of others, especially those who had no one.

As Bits lay on the ground, I shook my head. "Can we lay on your bed?" I asked her.

"Otay," she said, picking up the book and tossing it in the middle of the bed. She laid across the bed, and I knelt beside it, plucking out a dark green for the wheels of the tractor on the page she had indicated she wanted to colour. "Oh, pretty."

"Very," I agreed. "Do you like green?" She nodded. "What's your favourite colour? Do you have one?"

For several seconds, Bits considered the crayons in the box before pulling out a bright, apple green crayon and holding it out to me. "Dis," she said.

I smiled. "That's a pretty shade of green," I said. Carefully considering the remaining colour options, I plucked out a burnt orange and held it out to her. "I like this orange."

She smiled. "Me, too," she said. "But, dis better." She indicated the green crayon.

Laughing, I nodded my head. "I agree," I said. As we coloured, I asked her about how she was doing at the group home and whether or not she was making friends. According to Bits, she was good, and she really liked Ayla and Rickey, a girl and a boy her age. She said Mike was a "meanie" because he threw the ball at Sarah's head during outside time a couple of days prior, but, mostly, she liked that she could go whenever she wanted.

"What do you mean by that?" I asked her, watching her subtly as I coloured.

She gave me a sober look. "Bad man said no go. Sometimes, I couldn't holl it, and I axe-adent. Bad man said I sleep on axe-adent. Sister say it okay to axe-adent. Not make me sleep on axe-adent. I use potty anytime."

I nodded, following her communication fairly fluently. I had never been impressed with what the man in question had subjected a child to, but the more I learned whether from Bits or from Olivia, the less human he seemed to be even in my head. "I'm glad you can use the potty anytime," I said. "Do you know how to go by yourself?"

"Uh huh," she said, nodding. "Sister give hugs ev'ry time we go and wash hands. Not me. Not like hugs. Sister give Long Neck hug, though."

"Good," I said with a warm smile. "Long Neck needs lots of hugs." Bits nodded, hugging the dinosaur to her before offering him out to me. Gently, I took him and held him against me. "Good, Long Neck. Such a good boy."

Bits nodded her head, taking the toy back from me and holding it against her chest with one protective arm. We resumed colouring, but she was more absent mindedly moving the crayon about the page, and she had not noticed that I was merely holding my crayon, watching her. After a few seconds, she wormed her way over to the side of the bed nearest me and stepped off, her tiny face scrunched with worry. Instinctively, I sat back and opened my arms, and, after a few seconds, she fell against me, sobbing.

Cautiously, I bundled Bits up in my arms and sat on her bed, holding her like an infant in my lap, her body tucked against me as she trembled. "I've got you, baby," I murmured, rubbing my thumb up and down over her arm. "You're safe here."

Softly, I hummed the same song I had sung to her a few days prior. Her sobbing and shaking was considerably less intense than it had been that day, but she was still genuinely afraid. "Far away, long ago, things I yearn to remember," I half-whispered, half-sang. "And, a song someone sings, once upon a December."

I sang until the tears stopped, and Bits was a dead weight in my lap. As I unfolded myself, I tucked her in to her bed and ducked out of the room after watching for a few seconds to make sure she stayed asleep.

Annette was in the main room, folding laundry into rows of little baskets. Kneeling beside her, I began to fold shirts. "She fell asleep," I explained.

"That's a first," Annette murmured. "You really did bond with her, didn't you?"

"I guess. Why?" I set the folded shirt back on the ground, beginning a stack. I picked up a second shirt.

Annette shook her head. "She won't sleep, not normally. The nurses give her a mild sedative to help her sleep, and, even then, her nights are riddled with nightmares. Sometimes, in the day, she just passes out from exhaustion. I'm starting to think she's going to need to be hospitalized in the PICU for a while. Continuation like this is going to be too taxing on her brain, especially while she's still physically healing."

Biting my lip, I nodded. While I did not want to see Bits in the pediatric ICU at the hospital, I also did not want to attend her funeral. Since I had started working with human services, I had attended three infant funerals and one funeral for a seven year old boy. I had absolutely no intentions of attending any more if I could help it – though, if a child on one of my cases died, and the guardians were willing to allow me to attend the funeral, I would not say no. It was heart breaking burying the child, but even then, someone in the world had to be there, to care enough. At one of the infant funerals, Olivia, Nick, myself, and Casey's mother had been the only people who had attended. The child's mother was incarcerated at Riker's pending a murder trial. "If that's what is medically best for her, that might be what we have to do," I said. "She was specifically brought here because of the medical treatment that she would receive. If your medical staff feel that she would be better assisted in the PICU setting, then I have no problem agreeing. She's so young, and she's still more easily adoptable than an older child. I don't want her to have to be in the system when she's ten and have her think that she's not worth enough to someone."

"Agreed," Annette murmured, picking up the small pile of clothes in front of me and parceling them out to their appropriate baskets. "What's the plan, otherwise?"

"Bits is officially a ward of the state. Once she's medically cleared, she'll need to be enrolled in education, whether through schooling here at the home or in the local district. There's still a pending investigation into the adults in the home where she was found. As a favour, if she says anything about her history to you or any of the Sisters, could you please forward that information on to Detective Benson?"

"Of course. Detective Benson is a sweet heart. She's been up a couple of times, but Bits hasn't been in the place to really travel down memory lane. She's too traumatized to really sit through an interview. Though, I have to admit, she is hundreds times better when you're here. From the moment she saw you in the church, she's been significantly better."

"She's been through a lot," I murmured, ready to defend the child for her actions.

Annette smiled. "I know," she said. "It's not her fault. But, look at you. I would say she's not the only one attached." Shaking her head, Annette frowned. "Don't get too close, Alex. This one's going to break your heart into a thousand tiny pieces."

"Too late for that," I snickered, but I was not joking. I saw so much of me in that little dark skinned girl, and so much more hurt than I had ever experienced. Bits was a survivor, but she had very much broken my heart. "Have you heard anything back from her genetics test?"

"No," Annette said, shaking her head. "Relax. That usually takes a month to come back, and we sent it off a week ago when you faxed us the court order. Hopefully, whatever tribe she's from will take her. It's terrible enough that she was born and raised in such abject horror, but it'll be sad if she's rejected."

I shrugged. "I doubt they will reject her. There's a huge movement to teach native children the culture and the languages of the tribe. It's been my experience, anyway, that when heritage is proven, the tribe in question will place the child. I know I'm going to miss her."

Gently, Annette picked up my hand, stopping me from my folding, and I looked at her, really looked at her. She had the haunted eyes of someone who had been doing this for far too long, and I shuddered to think just how long that was. I had never really asked. But, her eyes looked like mine, and mine had not gotten that way until I had been in Special Victims, watching some of the most horrifying cases unravel before me. The inhumanity of mankind never ceased to amaze me. Granted, as I delved more and more into the human services spectrum, neither did the compassion that some people had to offer. Annette was one of those people. "It will be okay," she said. "She'll be okay. I don't think I've ever shared a case with a DHS attorney who is as passionate and committed as you are. She's got you. She'll be fine. You just take care of yourself, okay? Don't burn out too quickly because your heart is too big."

I smiled softly, returning to my folding. My heart did not used to be this way. By the time I was supervising Special Victims, I had closed off. I was a stone cold bitch. Casey had changed that about me. It had been in little ways, with little things, like when I carried her down the street because I could or when she would ask me to describe things to her once she had gone blind or how she had me taste every flavour of ice cream one day in the parlor because she wanted my honest opinion on which tasted the best. It was the little things that had opened me back up again, and, in so many ways, it was those little things that enabled me to work in the position I had now. "Thanks," I murmured. "I should go. I have a couple more kiddos to visit today."

"Sure thing. See you next week."

Smiling, I nodded and left.

I spent a couple of hours playing Candyland with Todd before taking Chance to the library to read books and pick out a book to check out, the seven year old beyond excited that he would be able to take a book back to the group home. The rules were that he would leave the book with the staff and then ask to be able to read it during quiet time. After quiet time, he was to return it so that the book did not get lost or damaged. Chance readily agreed, and I explained the agreement to the staff who were happy to oblige. Then, I wandered. I went to the coffee shop and to the bakery, but I could not find anything to settle down.

So, of course, I ended up in the one place I always seemed to go when I could not settle myself down.

Tony opened the door with a wide grin. "Margaret, guess who finally decided to show up?" he called, stepping back to let me in, pulling me into a tight hug as he did so. I returned the hug, still marveling at how we had transcended from icy stares and firm handshakes to bear hugs and grins. Of course, when I had first met the man, he had been playing the role of the father of the woman I was courting. I had needed to prove myself to him, and I had, albeit unwittingly. He had talked about Casey as if her disease defined her, and when I had all but told him to go to Hell, it had impressed the military man with a reputation of stone.

Casey's mother rushed into the foyer, pulling me from Tony's arms into her own as she hugged me tightly. "If you didn't come by by tomorrow, I was going to call you," Margaret scolded, pursing her lips as she looked me over. "Alexandra, you're working too much."

I laughed. "I'm an attorney, of course I work too much," I chided. "And, you -" I gestured valiantly around "-You clean too much."

I earned a chuckle from Tony. "That's what I keep telling her," he said. "See, Maggie, I told you."

Margaret huffed at me. "Don't get him going, Alex, you know better," she said, shaking her finger at me. It occurred to me, not for the first time, that I really felt like I had a family with Casey's family. I missed her deeply, but my relationship with her parents and her siblings helped to heal that wound just a little. And, I knew that, at least with her parents, having me around helped, too. After all, I had been Casey's wife. In some ways, I still was. Despite the best intentions of my friends and coworkers, I was far from ready to move on. In that moment, I did not think any of them expected me to be ready, but they often talked as though one day I would be. They understood more about loss than I did, though, because, standing there in my in-laws' home with my hand around my wedding ring, I did not think I could ever love another person like that again. Sometimes, when bodies met, there was a spark that could be fanned into a flame. But, for Casey and I, our souls had met, and it was Earth shattering.

"Alright, alright," I said, pouring three cups of tea and passing them out. It was kind of my role when I went over. I always made tea. I think it was just something to do, and they let me do it. Truth be told, though, I was grateful.

I stayed and we talked for a couple of hours. I discussed the basic concept of some of my cases without revealing names or anything particularly identifying. Tony remarked his disgust in some parents, and I asked if they had ever considered fostering or adopting after Rachel had been born.

"We thought about it," Margaret said, "but with Tony moving around so much, it didn't really seem fair to a foster kid to stay for a few weeks and then go on to another family. I think the children would have liked it, though, if we had." Margaret gave me that mysterious smile before she set her cup down and looked at me with very serious eyes. "You want a child."

It was not a question. It was a statement, as if she already knew it to be factual. Olivia had regularly talked with me about being a foster parent, and several of my social workers were constantly on me about it. I had given them my reasons for not doing it, and while they had not let the issue go, they had relaxed on me about it a little. But, to be told that I wanted a child was something new to me. No one had dared confront me with that notion, and I had never put much stock into it. Holding my cup to my chest with one hand, I pressed my hand to my stomach almost reflexively. I had no intentions of becoming pregnant, but it was as though my instincts were moving for me. "I-" I trailed off, unsure of what to say.

"It's okay, Aly," Margaret said. "Don't think about Casey being here or not being here. Don't think about what she would have wanted. Don't think about your work schedule and your crazy hours. Think about you. Think about that part of you inside of you that is maternal."

I closed my eyes as I considered what she was asking me to dismiss. Essentially, it was setting aside my responsibilities and what of my life I had built with Casey before she had been taken from me. But, behind all that, I did like the feel of a child curled in my arms, asleep. I liked the long conversations and the drawings and blowing bubbles. I liked being the one to wipe away the tears on the cheeks of some of my kids in group homes. If they had to cry, I wanted to be able to make it better. It was almost an instinctive drive that was pushing me.

"I can't," I finally said. "I have so many kids on my case load. If I had a child of my own, that would take away from my ability to be there for them. They need someone, Margaret, and right now, other than the group home staff, I'm the most consistent person in their lives. I have kids where they feel like I'm the only person in the world who cares about them. How do I turn that down for something so selfish as having my own child? How do I tell all of the other children that they're less important to me?"

Margaret smiled that knowing, secretive smile. Casey had that smile. I knew where she got it from. "Does your child have to be an infant?" she asked.

I shook my head. "No," I answered, floored at the fact that I was actually having that conversation. "I mean, to be honest, it would be so much better if I took on an older child." My heart leaped in my chest, and breathing suddenly felt difficult. "But, I can't, Margaret. First of all, my career would get in the way of my parenting, and I'm not prepared to tell a child that he or she is worth less than another child. That is never the case. Second, no child would want me as their parent. Casey may have softened the edges, but I'm still a – a political machine."

"No, you aren't," Tony said, his voice surprisingly firm as though the matter were not to be discussed further. "Maybe you were, once, but in all the time we've known you, you are caring, compassionate, and wonderful. I can see why my daughter fell head over heels for you. The only shame is that you have no idea what an amazing woman you are. Casey told us what you did for her and for others without questioning it. And, to be honest, she would not have told you that she wanted children unless she had wanted them with you."

In so many ways, that last sentence was a weight. On one hand, I was elated. I felt special. Casey had a way of doing that to me. On the other hand, I was crushed. Casey had wanted to raise a family, and it had all been stripped from her. It had been stripped from me. Slowly, I set my cup down, my body feeling suddenly too heavy.

"Do you want children?" Margaret asked, her voice soft, her hand on my knee in that motherly fashion.

Feeling the tears behind my eyes, I nodded, the sob escaping before I had time to catch it. Margaret scooted closer to me, my hands in her hands. "It's okay, Alex," she murmured. "It's okay." As though from a distance, I heard Tony get up and leave the room, leaving just me and my mother-in-law in the room together, her hands covering mine.

Eventually, I was able to pull myself together, and I wiped the remaining tears from my cheeks. "I'm sorry," I whispered. "I just seem to be bursting out into tears at all kinds of awful moments lately. I don't know what's wrong with me."

"Grief," Margaret said. "For what you lost and what you can never have. But, don't let that be a reason to not be everything else that you wanted. Somewhere, there is a very lucky child waiting for you to be his or her mother, and you will be an amazing mother, and it will not come at a cost to other children because you won't let it. You have a kind heart, Alex, under all that snowy exterior, and I do believe it's big enough to love them all. And, God would not have given it to you if He did not want you to use it."

I smiled. "Thanks, Margaret," I murmured. "Maybe someday, but not right now."

"When you're ready, Alex, regardless of what you decide, just know you can turn to Tony and I for support. And, if you do decide to have children, we sincerely hope you'll consider allowing us to be their grandparents."

Leaning forward, I hugged her. "If I do have children, I hope their relationship with you two is nothing less than grand," I mused.


End file.
